Sacrafice and Goals

I’ve come to the realization that there is a basic principle in the Universe that I was never really aware of before, but I am becoming very, very aware of it now, and realizing how true it is. It is that if you want something, and you truly desire that thing, in order for you to get it, there is something else that you have to sacrifice.

And so the level of the desire that you have will determine the amount that you are prepared to sacrifice to get what you truly want. That is to say…… when the desire outweighs the penalty you will get into action, but not before.

Now to take this out to the extreme, it shows why drug addicts will go to the length that they do in order to satisfy their desire. But the problem that drug addicts have is that their desire is an illusion; their desire can never be satisfied. However they are prepared to make any sacrifice in order to meet that desire and that desire is only temporarily satisfied, so it will be ever present, and so the amount that they are prepared to sacrifice becomes even greater to the point that they feel that they have nothing to sacrifice any more. And so their desire will turn to desperation. Now we can see this happen in lesser levels of addiction, or less recognized areas of addiction. We attend to everything that we have to do according to the condition that we have as we grow up; according to the environment in which we have our initial training, and the principles and values that we are trained recognize as being those that are worthy of us pursuing.

So we generally tend to find that in our younger years we will want to pursue the goals and the dreams and the aspirations of those who have given us that training. So for me personally, that came down to the dream of home ownership, family, enough money to be contented, but not requiring that I be wealthy. And so I certainly pursued those things that were ingrained in me during my initial training in my youth. To follow the dreams of my parents, which I did and I did very well, I think. But after I had actually gained the nice country property, the family, the position of respect within the community for doing what was expected of me I found that that too was an illusion; it did not really bring true satisfaction and contentment in life. At that time I looked around and found that there are more things that I really should achieve. So I set about to build a business in the pursuit of a greater degree of wealth and position in the community – and I even achieved that to the point that I had bank managers visit me, where I had financial institutions wanting to stuff hundreds of thousands of dollars in my pocket. I had people sending me letters wanting to give me a brand new car, they have already got the deal done, and all I have to do is go and pick my new car up and take it away. Crazy stuff! But this was because I fitted their profile of a person that they wanted to lend their money too – because they thought that I was a person on the up, a person who could give them back what they wanted in their goal. But when I reached that level I felt that even this was an illusion.

Then I realized that there are other things that I wanted. And when I realized that I had been dreaming for years, that I had been pursuing an illusion, then I wanted to change all that. There were other things that I was now more interested in doing. A different life, with an entirely different way of looking at the world. And I found that I was prepared to sacrifice all the previous achievements for an opportunity to break away. I think that it comes to the fact that I realized that the conditioning of my mind had caused me to do the things that I thought I wanted to do. It took me nearly fifty years to come to that realization – where does life go with this, that it takes so long to come to an understanding of what you want…. Or is it now only chasing a new illusion.

There are still many things that I miss about the old life that I had. Interestingly those things still attract me. I am concerned about some of the people that I was involved with in that time, and they are still a part of me – always will be. But the whole life that I had constructed simply had too many things that I was not satisfied with. It took a major change to make me feel some real direction again. Perhaps there was no further challenge that really grabbed me any more, so I had to hit the reset button to reset my mind to a new world of challenges that I felt motivated to rise to.

Goals are a wonderful thing for everyone to set in their lives. And we all have to have goals because you have to have a track to run on. But I have found it is just so frustrating to achieve your goal only to find that it was truly just an illusion.

There is the humorous quotation about the guy who climbed the ladder of success, and when finally reaching the top found that it was against the wrong wall. This always brings a smile, but how true is it for so many of us?

It has taken me a long time go understand the basic principle here. It comes down to a death and resurrection. We do have to completely let go of everything if we are to experience a change and when we let it go, it dies, or falls away if you don’t like the death word. It is now only in the past where it is unchangable and part of those eternal moments that we all carry with us. But this is a totally irreversable process. Time is the precious comodity that we all have been given, but it only goes one way. Looking back with longing is futile, and we all know it. If you try to revisit the past, you will surely be disapointed. If you have tried it, you already know this. There is no going back.

And I am sure that I have not got it right yet. But the thing that I do know for absolute certain, is that if you have a desire, and you have a want for a particular thing, a goal, an achievement, then there is something that you will have to give up in order to get it. You will not pursue that goal and you will not pursue the fulfillment of that desire if you believe that the sacrifice is too great.

How much are you prepared to sacrifice in order to achieve the next goal that you set for yourself? Even small goals require a sacrifice of some of your time, some of your talent, some of your money, or some of what you have so far has to be given up in order to move on to the next goal. So, how much do you want your goal? How much do you truly desire that benefit? If the benefit is not enough to outweigh what you have to sacrifice to get it, then you won’t go for it. Then you will be standing there saying, “I wish it were easier to get” But it truly is that easy to get….. all you have to understand is that the sacrifice has to be worth the attainment of the next goal. Now if the next goal is in your perception, not worthy of the sacrifice that you have to make, then you won’t do it. It is not a good enough a goal for you. The perceived benefit does not outweigh the sacrifice. And until it does, then you cannot move on. And that is what the rule of the universe is…. That the goal has to be worthy of the sacrifice that you see yourself having to make in order to motivate you to move toward it.

Now a clear illustration of this is seen by us all of the time. And we all pity those that we see engaged in that pursuit. Because we know that such pursuits as an addiction gambling, or an addiction for drugs, or an addiction for sex, or an addiction for a quick buck by lottery or some get-rich-quick scheme, taken up as the way that person thinks is the way to achieve their goal. So those means of attaining the fulfillment of their goals and desires, which most people can recognize quickly as being a futile pursuit, are attempted as the fulfillment of their desire, and so they sacrifice everything that they have in that way of attaining it. Now that is an obvious thing and most people see that this is an aberration – it will never bring them the fulfillment that they want. And so it is a spiral downward that leads to ultimate destruction.

But there are less insidious means that people may use in order to attain their goal. The goal may simply be to attain freedom. Perhaps this comes down to people wanting to break free of what was ingrained into them when they were children by their parents, their peers, the government under which they were raised, by the principles that was taught to them or the morality that was taught to them. These things take a long time for people to be able to stand back and look at where they have come from, what they are doing, what they hope to achieve, and be able to see if their current direction is going to take them to where they want to go. Just doing what you think is right is where most people position themselves without really standing back and asking why am I doing this.

And we see so many people break out of that by some diversion that they think may be able to fast track them to their goal or break them away from what they were trained and conditioned into thinking was the ultimate destination for them to see themselves happy and contented. They realize that that the path to happiness and contentment was really only the view of the people who provided that conditioning as being their ideal of what is happiness and what is contentment. So when people work and find themselves attaining what they were conditioned to believe would provide them with happiness and contentment, and when they get there, it does not provide that. And so they have feelings of being betrayed, they have feelings of loss of trust in those things that they thought were so worthy. They start to realize that these things are only worthy for the people who provided the conditioning, but they were not the right path to contentment for themselves as individuals.

For me, it comes back to what am I prepared to sacrifice to live in my new world, this whole new dimension that I have found through a shift in viewpoint. Now it has been totally unexpected of me, in my understanding of myself as a person, to find that I have been prepared to make such a large degree of change, that degree of sacrifice to move into this new way of living. It is even frightening for me to now stand outside myself and look back over what I have done, where I have been, what goals I have now forgone to attain new goals. To this level, I could never have predicted, and nobody who knows me could ever believe that I could go to the lengths that I have to do the things that I have done to attain a new goal, that on the outside would never appear to have the value of the previous goals that I had ingrained in me to believe were so high in value. But I have done it. In my life, I have always had the belief that nobody should ever regret having done any single act in their life, because every thing that a person does in their life is something that they learn from. If they gain a monetary benefit, or they gain a positional benefit, then that is fine. If they see that there is a monetary decline, or their positional value has declined, it is not something to regret. It is something to learn from. So if you make a new goal, and you move toward that goal, regardless of the perceived benefit, and do not achieve it, it is not a loss. You have gained by the benefit of the experience.

You are 100% responsible for everything that you do and for everything that happens to you. You cannot abdicate that responsibility. “He is a self made millionaire”. Sure he is! But he is also a self made pauper by the same principle. “One is only poor only if they choose to be”. Great words from a busty lady in her song, and so very true in all of our lives.

What are you prepared to sacrifice in order to move on or make that significant change in your life? When you understand the principle of sacrifice, things can become so much clearer and you can then set goals for yourself that you can really start working toward knowing full well what you will have to give up before you can realize those goals. When you are setting your goals you can then only set the goals that are attainable because you have already faced the prospect of losing the things that will have to be given up to get them.

So….. after all…….. Life is journey and not a destination. No one is getting out of here alive anyway and no one has figured out how to take anything with them. Let’s not worry about what we may lose. At the end of this temporary tap dance on the third rock from the sun the only thing left will be to know how we benefited the world by our existence and what did we manage to take with us when we departed this world.

Answer:
a. our legacy will be in how we benefited another person or persons by our actions – and……….
b. ah, now that is another topic. The only thing you can take with you is knowledge and love. Think about that for a while as you plan your next move and set your goals.

What are you prepared to sacrifice?