Escape the Pleasure Trap

by Yogi Amrit Desai

Every passionate pursuit or attempt to gain the glorious dream of happiness and pleasure turns into a trap when attraction to that pleasure becomes dependency. If you are dependent on pleasure for your happiness, then you are also always afraid of losing that pleasure. That is why there is no freedom from fear. You can make as many changes as you want and be as clever as you want, but if you're not clever enough to be free from fear, all your cleverness is foolishness.

Whenever you try to trap happiness and pleasure, what happens is that pleasure traps you. That's because you want to control the pleasure. The moment you have a need to control it, you are automatically controlled by it  through the fear of losing the pleasure you searched for so persistently.

So attachment to pleasure is a trap. We control it so we can have more of it, and because we need more of it, we need to have it guaranteed. Then, the more you like pleasure, the more you will repeat it. The more you repeat a pleasurable experience you will progressively grow insensitive to it. The need will arise to increase the intensity and repetition of the pleasure. The more you need to repeat the more control will be required to fulfill your desperate need.

That's it. It's a trap that nobody can get out of. The attachment to pleasure is the basic cause of misery for all of humanity. Masters have known and taught this throughout history, but psychologists don't. On the contrary, quite often, they advise you that you can have anything you want. Though it may be good to have the facility to get what you want, it's even better to know what it is you really want in the first place.

The more you need pleasure to be happy, the more control will be required to fulfill your need. Then you will invariably find that the objects or individuals upon whom you depend for pleasure are beyond your control. Your attachment then turns to desperation as the fear of loss manifests.

The more attached you are to a particular pleasure, the more desperate you get and the more blinded you become. Your mind will be distorted in its thinking in order to support what it is you want, because you are the creator of your destiny and you are given all the powers and facilities to get what you want. But it may not necessarily be what is best for you. If you are not conscious and careful about what you want, you will get what you want and simultaneously create a trap by getting it. This is why so much emphasis in all spiritual teachings is on surrender. You release attachment to pleasure and instead practice accepting and embracing what you are experiencing now. You say, "God, whatever you give me is fine with me." You may still try to get what you like, but always remaining unattached and trusting that what you get is a gift from God. Then the experience of bliss, of happiness without cause, begins to manifest in your life.

The masters saw only one solution; that is, not creating attachment. Keep everything on a choice level. You may choose to have pleasurable experiences - there's nothing wrong with that. You choose to have success. You don't have to choose failure. But you release the habit of trying to control your experience one way or the other. You release the belief that you can only be happy with pleasure or success or what you want. Because when you get it, you find out that what you want is only what you think you wanted. Then you are free to experience without fear of loss.

The whole search for happiness must be perceived with a clear understanding of what it is you want. What you really want the most is freedom from fear. Unless you get freedom from fear, which is self-binding and illusive, nothing you get outside of yourself is going to bring you the real satisfaction you seek.

When you have no fears, you are boundless in your capacity to process and receive the love you need. You become the vehicle for love. It comes through you and goes out of you and you give more as you receive more. But whenever you try to manage or contain your experience of love, its universal quality disappears and love becomes attachment instead. Remain aware that what you really want the most is freedom from fear. Choose happiness rather than struggling to create pleasure.