I mean that literally. Everything you want is really just a stand-in for some quality of being: happiness, contentment, satisfaction, fullness. Things and other people can't give you any of those qualities; you can only give them to yourself by developing being. Nothing else will ever satisfy you. This website is about developing being - getting the things you really want.
The spark of being inside you is is of the same substance as God. That spark is longing to guide you in the process of development. Being always knows what to do next; all you have to do is listen carefully and follow being's advice. Being is always reaching out to your everyday conscious self, trying to get your attention and point you in the right direction.
The trick is to learn how to hear being's advice. Your life is full of noisy influences, and the voice of being is quiet and subtle. But learning to hear it does not take special training or advanced techniques; it's a very simple process, something you can start right now. There's no need to give up your life or surrender to some guru; you are your own guru. That spark of being inside is who you really are, and that's who you want to surrender to: the very best version of you.
Developing being - also known as spiritual growth - is not something that maybe you'll have time for later on, or some kind of practice that you do at a certain time each day; it consists of living your life a little better day to day. Everything that's already in your life can become part of your way forward to a better, deeper, richer life, a life guided by being.
Any time you make a really good choice, the spark of being in you expands just a bit, and you experience a subtle pleasure; that's what being pleasure is. If you pay careful attention to what results in that pleasure and what doesn't, and let that guide your actions so that you do more and more of the things that result in being pleasure, being will develop in you and your life will become immeasurably richer, deeper, and more satisfying. This website is about paying attention to being pleasure and letting it guide your life.
The spark of being in you, like everything else in the universe, is a gift from God. But unlike all the other gifts, being is of the same substance as God; you have God in you. Developing being is becoming more like God. Whether you know it or not, you're on a quest to develop being as fully as possible, to develop all of your talents and potentials, and to become as much like God as you possibly can.
This practice puts being first. Instead of "start with this meditation/yoga/exercise; if you do it long enough, you'll get in touch with being," I say "first turn to being and let being tell you what to do next." Let being be your teacher; look for being pleasure. When you find it, do whatever you can to make it happen again. This whole practice consists of learning to recognize being pleasure, finding out experimentally what caused it - what you did right - whenever you experience it, and going on from there to find ways to experience it again.
This website contains information about learning to recognize being pleasure and letting it guide your life, and it includes a detailed outline for a concrete practice that'll point you in the right direction. These are the pages:
There never was a golden age when everyone delighted in pure being; that's wishful thinking. You're given the tiniest spark of being, and from there on out it's up to you. If you begin developing being, you'll find help everywhere; the entire universe is geared to help you develop being. This help is a manifestation of God's grace. But even with all the help in the world, you can't develop being unless you do something; that's what doing is for. Everything you do should somehow contribute to the development of being, either directly or indirectly. But your condition is one of doing for doing's sake; being is nowhere in sight. For life to be satisfying, doing and being not only need to be in balance, but that balance must be ruled by being. The practice of being pleasure is about putting your life in balance, with being in charge.
When doing supports being, doing is imbued with being's qualities: satisfaction, tranquility, appreciation, enjoyment, generosity, tolerance, creativity. When doing doesn't support being, there's no satisfaction, no matter how "good" the doing is. So you think you didn't do quite the right thing, or you didn't do it hard enough or long enough, and you start a cycle of compulsive doing. Or perhaps you try to fill the emptiness with consumption. You drift into a state where you do things and consume things compulsively, rather than doing the things that will make your life rich and full.
Everything you do should be aimed at making your life better: deeper, richer, more satisfying and pleasurable. You already know that once a basic level of comfort, health, and safety is reached, living cannot be improved by collecting more money, power, or experiences. What you crave is being; it's inside, and doesn't rely on possessions, reputation, or anything else external.
The practice of being pleasure is about turning your attention to being and making it the center of your life. This practice will enrich your life right away by adding time outs, times focused toward being that will come as a welcome respite from doing. It will lead to a rebalancing of your life. Doing that doesn't support being will become less interesting, and naturally wither and die; doing that does support being will take root and blossom in you. If you keep with the practice long term, you'll transform your life, ultimately finding in every moment a rich experience of being. Your life will become your own in a way you never suspected it could, because being will be making every bit of it into a reflection of who you are.
Being pleasure is being's experience of the act of becoming; it's what being experiences when being acts to expand. Being pleasure can go by without being noticed by your everyday conscious self if you're not primed to experience it and recognize it for what it is. It's crucial that you recognize being pleasure when it happens and carefully consider what led up to the experience so you can continue doing the right thing, the thing that results in development of being. It may not be what you think it is; you can only find out by an ongoing process of experimentation. If you do what you think resulted in being pleasure again but don't experience being pleasure, it may have been some other factor or combination of factors that resulted in growth of being, instead of what you thought it was. Or it may be that you need something entirely different now; you've gotten what you can get out of whatever you were doing right before. So you try another experiment. The more attention you pay right at the moment of being pleasure, the better clues you'll have for finding your way forward.
This website outlines an approach for developing being that starts from being and is guided by being at every step. The practice consists of turning your attention to being and learning to follow the guidance of being to create your own path forward, rather than following some kind of set program. The exercises, practices, and experiments that are described are intended primarily as examples for you to consider in creating your own. My goal is to get you to make your own way from the get-go, seeking and following the guidance of being at every step. The principles and guidelines on these pages may be of use to you as you find your own way, but everything needs to be tested and then recreated so that it fits you, or discarded if it doesn't.
This approach is not for everyone. If you want a set program or detailed guidance from a teacher, the practice of being pleasure is not for you. But if you're ready to confront the world and your development on your own terms, and to create the practices and structure you need for that, this website may well be a useful resource.
Below are some factors that might help someone succeed in finding their own way. Taken together, they offer a snapshot of the kind of work involved in the practice of being pleasure.
Regarding the contradictions: I did not intentionally create all the contradictions on this website. The unintentional contradictions are manifestations of God's grace, helping me along with this writing task. Contradiction is discussed in Exile, The gift of learning, and elsewhere on this website. I invite you to pay particular attention when two ideas on this website present a contradiction.
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