Unsatisfactoriness?

Parents tend to tell their young children Disneyfied stories to make them feel happy & safe. Teenagers & young adults tend to have unbridled optimism & energy to pursue their goals in life. In adulthood, we begin to see that our talents, energies, opportunities and even the time to achieve our goals are all limited, and dependent on many, many variables beyond our control.

In childhood we're shocked to learn there's no Santa. Gradually, most of us realize that life is not a Disney movie. A few of us fully grasp that the best tool to control the material world - our symbolic egoic consciousness - simply cannot satisfy us. Despite our best efforts, we, everyone & everything we love, are immersed in constant unpredictable change, aging, sickness & death. If we deny, suppress, or try our best to distract ourselves from this existential reality, it will just eat away our insides. To protect ourselves from this, many of us become increasingly armored, hard & numb to everything & everyone, including to ourselves. Many of us become resigned to live "unexamined" lives.

The best tool in the world can't turn our life into a Disney movie. BUT this is precisely what our symbolic egoic consciousness is geared to do & tries to do. So at this level of consciousness we keep trying, keep failing & become increasingly more frustrated. At this level of consciousness, life is unsatisfactory, frustrating, stressful, depressing, anxiety-provoking etc.

But what if we ONLY use this tool to live a good, decent life - not "lifestyles of the rich & famous", nor giving up & wallowing in cynicism - just a good, decent life?

What if we intentionally shift into postsymbolic transpersonal consciousness to appropriately engage existential reality?

"behind all hardening and tightening and rigidity of the heart, there is always fear. But if you touch fear, behind fear there is a soft spot. And if you touch that soft spot, you find the vast blue sky. You find that which is ineffable, ungraspable, and unbiased, that which can support and awaken us at any time”. Pema Chodron