Do you just want to feel better or is knowing the Truth your first priority?

[Blackhawk]

Quote from Adyashanti, from the book "The end of your world":

 

"Most of what we are told about awakening sounds like a sales pitch for enlightenment. In a sales pitch, we are told only the most positive aspects; we may even be told things that are actually not true. In the sales pitch for awakening, we are told that enlightenment is all about love and ecstacy, compassion and union, and a host of other positive experiences. It is often shrouded in fantastic stories, so we come to believe that awakening has to do with miracles and mystical powers. One of the most common sales pitch includes describing enlightenment as an experience of bliss. As a result, people think, "When I spiritually awaken, when I have union with God, I will enter into a state of constant ecstacy". This is, of course, a deep misunderstanding of what awakening is.

There may be bliss with awakening, because it is actually a by-product of awakening, but it is not awakening itself. As long as we are chasing the by-products of awakening, we will miss the real thing. This is a problem, because many spiritual practices attempt to reproduce the by-products of awakening without giving rise to the awakening itself. We can learn certain meditative techniques - chanting mantras or sing bhajans, for example - and certain positive experiences will be produced. The human consciousness is tremendously pliable, and by taking part in certain spiritual practices, techniques, and disciplines, you can indeed produce many of the by-products of awakening- states of bliss, openness, and so on. But what often happens is that you end up with only the by-products of awakening, without awakening itself.

It is important that we know what awakening is not, so that we no longer chase the by-products of awakening.
We must give up the pursuit of positive emotional states through spiritual practice. The path of awakening is not about positive emotions. On the contrary, enlightenment may not be easy or positive at all. It is not easy to have our illusions crushed. It is not easy to let go of long-held perceptions. We may experience great resistance to seeing through even those illusions that cause us a great amount of pain.

This is something many people don't know they're signing up for when they start on a quest for spiritual awakening.
As a teacher, one of the things that I find out about students relatively early on is whether they are interested in the real thing - do they really want the truth, or do they actually just want to feel better? The process of finding the truth may not be a process in which we feel increasingly better and better. It may be a process during which we need to look at things honestly, sincerely, and truthfully - and that may or may not be an easy thing to do.

The sincere call from reality to reality, the sincere call to awaken, comes from a very deep place within us. It comes from a place that wants the truth more than it wants to feel good. If our orientation is simply to feel better in each moment, then we'll continue to delude ourselves, because trying to feel better in the moment is exactly how we delude ourselves. We think our delusions are making us feel better. In order to awaken, we must break out of the paradigm of always seeking to feel better. Of course, we want to feel better; it's part of the human experience. Everybody wants to feel good. We are hardwired to seek more pleasure and less pain. But there is an even deeper impulse within us, and that is what I describe as the impulse to awaken.
It's this impulse to awaken that gives us the courage to look at all the ways in which we deceive ourselves."