I primarily practice in a space called transformational coaching and this Jim Carrey quote nicely sums up the starting place of most of my client engagements.
“I hope everybody could get rich and famous and will have everything they ever dreamed of, so they will know that it’s not the answer” – Jim Carrey
I had heard this quote long before I knew what it meant and, more critically, before I had the level of consciousness to even be curious about what it could mean. I lacked humility, was full of false pride and was a slave to my unconscious conditioning that had me pursuing achievement, title, fame, possessions, and money. In the end I suppose I was chasing happiness, and these were the requirements I had assigned to happiness. Carrey’s quote is perfect because he knew I needed to get to the end of the road to fully comprehend how foolish I had been to search for something outside of myself that was in me the entire time. But how can we all be fools? It must run deeper than that.
Why had I never allowed myself to question whether these things would bring me happiness? It is not like there aren’t a million books saying they won't. Was it because this idea was never mine in the first place? Just like I never recall deciding that I wanted to go to school for 20 years so I could work for 45 years and retire exhausted and spent? What was I really chasing, and what drove me to lose myself in the chase? I was chasing the thing we are all really chasing which is Wholeness. I was looking to compensate for the broken parts of me that I had rejected and hidden in the shadows. The limiting beliefs that I am not enough, I am not worthy of love, that I don’t belong. If I can win at society’s materialistic game then no one, especially me, will see my brokenness. This is a survival program that does not allow itself to be exposed or questioned. This is where the seeking of Wholeness begins. Not chasing false idols.
But lighten up you say! Having money, title, fame, and possessions in and of themselves, disentangled from our survival program, are not bad things. This is true, but if you want to find out if these things have given you freedom or built you a prison before you get to the end of that road like I did, try asking the following question. Have they involved self-betrayal? Am I using them to seek comfort or am I attached? For all these are the road to suffering.
Self-betrayal: What is required of me to acquire these things? Can I be the person I chose to be, or do I sacrifice my character, even in a small way, to get them? Your character is the only thing that is real and the only thing that matters. It is all that remains with you at your last breath, and you take it into eternity.
Comfort: Do you think comfort and security brings happiness? That is a lie of our survival program. “No man is more unhappy than he who never faces adversity. For he is not permitted to prove himself” - Seneca
Attachment: Have you built your identity around these things? They are illusions of the material world but the imprisonment they create for you will feel very real. All suffering arises out of attachment. Or as Master Yoda says “attachment leads to jealousy, the shadow of greed that is. Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.”
This was meant to poke and provoke your ego and hopefully lead you to a place of curiosity because you know where that road goes. You have been on it for a long time.
The Way
