Truth and integrity are defined as the degree with which we can see reality for what it is.  However, once we form a perspective of what is around us, we are limited by that standpoint.  This is the quantum physics “collapse of the wave function”, where we take limitless potential and fixate it to a finite point of existence.

Our tendency is to create a conceptual basis for identifying what is good and desirable, vs. what is to be avoided.  The mind will never be comfortable with an unknown factor in the equation of life.  Rather, its nature is to devise predictable outcomes for behaviours in the known world.  Based on our experiences, we generate an idealistic model of life that we identify as a desirable reality.

Ideals Can Be Limiting
The mind indulges in its own idea of what is desirable.  It attaches value to materialism because it believes the material world is the source of our lives.  What is predictable by the mind is comfortable.

Over time we also develop a sense of what is preferable.  Our preferences build the framework for our choices.  Every idealistic situation comes with a sense of control that is tied into our desire to have a comfortable, predictable, & manageable life.  Personal preference takes the infinite and makes it finite.  The comfort is the minds ability to comprehend through a material “good & bad”.

All spiritual goals are aimed at finding comfort with the mysterious & unknown.  We surrender what is believed to be the ideal life, in order to accept what we are given.  The veils are lifted, mind and ego are transcended, and reality becomes this vast sense of “I Am”.

Being In The “Unknown”
It is a general sense that there is comfort in familiar things.  This comfort is re-enforcement.  How can we transcend the personal preferences of familiar comforts?

It’s subtle, the way our ideas form a construct of concepts.  It becomes comfortable to have thoughts that define our experience.  We find security in thinking that we know, instead of simply being.  It is not the Yoga that makes us enlightened, but the value we place on such practices that actually matters.

Believing that our lifestyle creates enlightenment is illusionary.  What our mind is effectively doing is attaching value where none needs to be attached.  Thus the mind constantly creates its illusionary model of reality which can be a form of comfort and security.

Being unattached grants appreciation of the gift of the moment.  It is not the object of our desire that brings satisfaction, but the belief itself.  We must suspend our indulgences in our own thoughts that create concepts of reality.  True reality is beyond definition.

Finding Security In The Comfort Of The True Self
When we have everything in the world that we think will make us happy, we quickly realize that it is a house of cards.  No material goal has any intrinsic value of itself.  Ironically, when the ideal world materializes for us, we are struck by its limitations.

Our concept of reality is like a grain of sand to the entire beech.  It is like one ray of light as compared to the entire sun.  True Self is the sun and ego is the ray of light, professing to be the sun.  When we find comfort in the true self instead of a material world, we are liberated and free.  This is not an achievement, but a gift bestowed on us as a realization of our true nature.

In this state, the material world is recognized for what it is.  We can actually appreciate what we have instead of chronically wanting something that will never be fulfilled.  Fulfillment is only a heartbeat away.