At some point in time, many of us begin to consciously search for something deeper in our lives. This could be meaning, love, authenticity, reality, truth, or many other expressions. Often this is referred to as a spiritual search or a movement toward personal growth or development.

All of these endeavors have one thing in common and that is – we are seeking something. It is the phenomenon of seeking that I want to address today.

Why do we seek? Are we missing something? Is our awareness that something is missing and we know what it is and are going after it? Or, are we aware of something already in our experience, but we want more of it.

One thing many of us seek is knowledge, we want to know or understand something. Perhaps we are seeking to know something about ourselves or someone else, why we or they act in a certain way. Maybe we see a pattern we want to change. Maybe we want to know why life works in a certain way.

Many of us, at some point, seek love or acceptance. This usually seems to involve relationships – getting a relationship, improving a relationship, getting rid of a relationship.

Another thing commonly sought in our culture is success or status. We want more money, a better position, a bigger office, to be seen on TV or recognized as an expert in our field.

Maybe we don’t know precisely what it is that we want, but are aware of a sense of dissatisfaction, anxiety, ennui, apathy, or other emotional state that seems to drive us to want to change our situation.

The word change appears to be intimately involved in the search. We want to change our state, our circumstances, our sense of self, or something else. Again, this change can revolve around something that is missing or enhancing the presence of something already here.

When we think about what we are seeking – what is it that we want to change? If we find that perfect relationship, what will that change? If we find the knowledge we seek, what will change? Or getting recognition or success – what changes?

If we take some time to really contemplate the situation, what we find is that what changes is us. Most of our seeking is oriented around changing our subjective experience – our experience of ourselves.

But, if we examine the notion of change or seeking from this perspective what we usually find first is a rejection of our present state, or sense of self, or circumstances. Can you see that? Why else would we want to change or feel the desire or drive to seek change?

Take a moment right now, to reflect on this, on your personal sense of seeking change. Do you find a sense of wanting to leave your present experience of self for some other experience – an experience of more fullness, more completeness, more satisfaction, more peacefulness, more love or lovability? This can be subtle, but do you see how rejection is implicit in that?

This is the conundrum of seeking change. It’s a puzzle and a bind because to reject our present experience, we have to contract, we have to pull away from our experience, push away our experience, or put a barrier between us and our experience.

If we are seeking love, acceptance, knowledge, success, or fame – how does our present experience feel? What’s it like to experience the lack of what we seek? What will our experience be like when we get what we want? In short, it’s not so much how things change, but how we change? How does change affect the experience of our present experience?

It is the experience of our experience that we want to change the most. To involve ourselves in this change in the normal way involves leaving the present for some fantasized future. But our experience is always – present experience. How can we leave the present to find the present?

There is nothing else but our present experience. How can we leave our self in this location, walk across the street, enter a different building and find a better self, a more complete self there? It doesn’t make sense. This is the answer to the riddle – we can’t.

What we seek is right here. What’s needed is not to seek change, to run from this to that while we continually reject our present experience. What we need is a more productive orientation to change. When we let go of the seeking, let go of the rejecting and assume the inward direction toward our experience that is most conducive to organic change – things start to change without the seeking, without all of the effort, without all of the false starts and disappointments that follow.

This inner orientation is – openness. Being open to our experience is how real change happens. We are open to the experience of our experience. Openness toward our experience brings us closer to our experience. Being closer to our experience means we’re closer to our self.

When we’re closer to our self, we’re more intimate with our situation, and more in touch with our capacities. Being closer to our self, we see things more clearly and in seeing things more clearly, more openness arises.

There can, of course, be some reactivity toward what arises, but we can be open to that. We can be open to allowing ourselves time for change.

If we are seeking love and are open to our present experience what we may find is a longing for love which may lead to an emptiness of love. If we don’t reject this experience, if we remain open to our experience of our experience we can discover many things about how our experience got shaped this way. As the process continues our whole relationship with love and our self begins to unfold. Being open to our experience allows our experience to unfold in a natural way. What we discover is that being open to our experience of our experience in the present is the path – the spiritual journey.

So this is my invitation – openness toward our experience in the present moment. If there is rejection, we’re open to that. If there is peace, we’re open to that. We don’t choose sides – we are simply open to the experience of our experience.

This doesn’t mean we act out, letting our compulsions run the show, or allow the ego to discharge the energy building in us for change and transformation because it is uncomfortable, inconvenient or fear provoking.

Openness means we are open to forces outside of our self (the bounded, limited, known world of the familiar and comfortable). We are open to seeing, feeling, experiencing and being moved inwardly by our experience to deeper more subtle awareness and understanding.

Openness moves our experience from the dull to a unimaginable treasure of richness.