Equanimous or Hungry?

     Do you feel continuously at ease, at home, satisfied, comfortable in your own skin, regardless of what's happening around you, even to you? If so, then you're a very highly developed, fully mature human being. However, whatever comfort you have is far more likely due to inadequate awareness of your inner world.

     Someone once said that Westerners are geniuses of the external world, and infants of inner worlds, while Easterners are (were?) the other way round. In the West, industry did and does provide amazing products and services to make life easier and better. Of course industry has a lot of negatives as well - some of which are intentional and pathological.

     "...... Charles Kettering (was) a major inventor and general of GM Research Labs. In 1929, at the beginning of the automobile industry in the United States, Mr. Kettering wrote in Nation's Business Magazine that business must create 'a dissatisfied consumer' and 'keep the consumer dissatisfied.' ... In his book The Affluent Society, in 1984, (John Kenneth) Galbraith writes that, in modern America, production will have to 'create the wants it seeks to satisfy.' In short, a large part of our consumption is what we are told to consume, told that we need ......"
     Alan Lightman       April 18, 2002     "Ideas" - CBC Radio       http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/
 
     So, feeling restlessly "needy" - like you absolutely must have more and better stuff right away to be happy, is a spreading disorder. Billions are spent annually on ads to make us feel exactly like this. An endless list of merchandise & services can - like crack-cocaine - briefly blunt, but never cure the hunger.
 
     Letting go of dependence on external stuff for happiness is not only possible, but an important part of becoming a mature human being.

Artist: Andrea Smith   http://www.andreasmithgallery.com/