pleasure and possessions!

   People continue to believe, despite the constant stream of evidence to the contrary, that the more they seek after pleasure and accumulate possessions, the more they will be filled with happiness, peace, and contentment. Yet boredom and disgust plagues these poor souls despite continual external stimuli. If wealth and fame brought happiness then why is it that celebrities and millionaires are often the very ones that are in the deepest pit of unrest, depression and despair, and so often commit suicide? If sex and drugs brought lasting happiness then prostitutes and drug addicts should be swimming in an ocean of happiness and peace, but they are not. Anyone who has lived a few years of adulthood, and who reflects back on life, must admit that nothing of this world ever truly and perfectly satisfies. No matter how intense an experience may have been for the moment, it quickly passes away, leaving behind an interior void, a vacuous disillusionment. Even after the most thrilling and intense experiences and pleasures one very soon begins to feel that inner gnawing emptiness return. We become most hungry where we thought we would be most satisfied. Everything leaves the soul incomplete and desiring more. Desires beget desires. All earthly pleasures and joys only whet the appetite as crumbs do a starving man. As the poet Blake put it: “‘More! More!’ is the cry of a mistaken soul: less than all cannot satisfy Man.” Why is this? Why are we disappointed? It is because we have a soul – a spirit – and it has an infinite capacity. And if our soul yearns for happiness, then it must be made for happiness, but if all earthly things fail to bring perfect peace and happiness then we must be seeking for these in all the wrong places.  One must look for peace somewhere else. One must plunge into the deep things of the spirit. Our passions can sometimes be satisfied, but we cannot, for our soul yearns for something beyond the material, beyond anything this world can give. We are disappointed and unsatisfied with things because there is a tremendous disproportion between the desires and ideals of our soul and their realization. We can imagine a diamond as big as the moon, and intensely desire it, but we will never see one, nor ever possess one. Yet even if we did, it would not bring one ounce of lasting happiness and interior rest, for our heart would then desire a diamond the size of the sun. An infinite hunger can only be filled, and thereby brought to rest, by something infinite. Nothing material can be infinite and nothing material can enter into our spirit and satisfy it.