Introduction

               "You can't always get what you want,

                 But if you try sometimes, you just might get what you need."

                                                                   -Rolling Stones

     Those two sentences, which represent advice and encouragement, touch on the basics of the human condition. We have needs, and also wants, which as the song implies, are what we THINK we need. The Stones suggest that we try, make efforts, to get what we think we need, and that thereby, even if we don't get what we want, we "just might" get what we need. Pretty good advice from young people, I think. It represents already some wisdom, as well as faith, hope and resiliency of spirit.

     But what if you don't know what you want, much less what you need? What if you have become discouraged with this strategy of trying to get what you want? Maybe it has gotten you into trouble, resulted in some form of punishment and humiliation. As the Stones also said, maybe you "can't get no satisfaction." That doesn't seem to have been true for them, but they did have to keep trying, as they also said. 

     Many people do become more or less discouraged, and the times when they do try to get what they want become few, far-between and feeble. Sometimes we want something that we can't have, such as the return of a loved one who has died, or maybe the secure and protected childhood that not everyone experienced. Sometimes it seems that we really want only that, that our other wants are superficial. It can lead to a feeling of alienation from life. Trying to "get what you want" is quite a good description of mental health. Not trying is often called mental illness. It really isn't an illness. One quits trying because trying hasn't been very rewarding. Of course it is associated with depression and anxiety, even psychosis. A body at rest tends to remain at rest, and so one becomes lazy, and likely obese. Psychotropic meds will facilitate both of those developments with a hell of a lot more reliability than their alleged benefits. The only effect of those products that is more reliable is their profits for manufacturers and marketers, not to forget rakeoffs for prescribers. But I digress.

     We need to try, to make efforts. I am suggesting to you that you should make efforts to experience awareness of reality. Obviously awareness of reality would help you to get what you need. You should learn to "want" this. In our culture it is an acquired taste, as I know. I am an American too, you know, suburban, middle class, with the "complexion and the connection." I know about the American dream, and quite a bit about the American reality too. We Americans do not pay any attention to the state of our consciousness. We ass-u-me that this is all fine, that we are "free." Freedom is a property of human consciousness, for your information. I wouldn't want to join our bloated prison population, and it is nice to have a job that pays decently so that one has a little money, an experience that fewer of us are having these days. But how free is a person who has subcontracted ones consciousness out to one's T.V., computer and "smartphone?" Being "smart," or the opposite, is an attribute of a human being, you know, not of a gadget.

     Efforts to experience awareness of reality are rewarding. This will help you. There are no harmful side effects to this practice if you do it correctly. This is a practical, effective and available way of maintaining or reclaiming your mental health. I am offering it to you on a silver platter and for free, much as it was offered to me. I didn't manufacture it, there can be no patent. Awareness of reality is from God, just consciousness pure and simple.

     The "mentally healthy" are busily trying to "get what they want," and having their strategy of living maintained by "intermittent reinforcement," at least for the time being. As Jesus said, "they have their reward." So long as they aren't exploiting others too brutally, what's wrong with it? But we all need awareness of reality, whether we know it or not. As Jerry Quarry once said to Muhammed Ali, "your ass can be had too, you know." We will all be victimized in the end, by ill health, old age if we are lucky, by death in any case. The human condition, and our personal condition, can look very bleak in certain moods, when we aren't trying to get what we want. We can try to counteract such moods by repeating comforting stories that we have heard, for example about life after death with God in Heaven. Stories are stories, whether religious, scientific, philosophical. Any kind of statement about your life is a story, any statement about how you feel and the accompanying rationalization and justification for why you feel that way. None of those stories tells the whole truth. 

     There is a widening gulf between those who sneer at the stories of religion and those who refuse to part with their faith regardless of the weight of evidence apparently on the side of our materialistic science. God is not a theory. Religious faith is faith that God is reality. This cannot be proven or disproven by argument. Reality is not known by thinking about it. Reality is known by awareness. Can you experience awareness now? Why don't we have real consciousness instead of living in delusions and hallucinations? Aren't we called to wake up and be what people obviously should be?