When you look around at your world, you see many different people and things. You feel an attraction toward some of these, and toward others you don’t. You naturally gravitate toward the people and things that bring you joy and comfort, and you try to avoid those that bring pain and unease. It is easy to develop a strategy for living life based on indulging in what you perceive will bring the greatest joy and avoiding what you perceive will be challenging or painful. Most people employ this strategy without consciously knowing it.

This strategy uses desire as the greatest motivator for creating your experiences. You desire or want “this,” so you go after it. You don’t want “this,” so you reject it and anything that resembles it. This strategy is flawed, principally because it is mostly about the ego taking charge and seeking aggrandizement and protection. The ego is a mental construct or idea that is useful for navigating the relative world, but it is not a reliable substitute for being motivated and informed by the conscious realization of the insubstantial and impermanent nature of reality. In other words, if you are motivated primarily by your ego, you toss about in an endless sea of reactivity and attachment. If equanimity is at the root of your life experience, you cultivate a calmness and balance that does not fall apart on waves of aversion and attraction