Your question takes us right to the heart of one of our greatest misunderstandings about ourselves and our real inner potential. The up and down/down and up movements of our emotional life is not life itself anymore than waves are all there are to an ocean. One of the ways the ocean expresses itself is by its surface movement -- but what is a wave compared to the ocean's vast and unfathomable depths? There is a much broader way to experience this life if we would only be willing to do the necessary self-exploration.
I sense the truth of what you're saying, but what practical steps can I take to arrive at the realization of a greater, more complete life.
You can start by giving yourself permission to be just as dissatisfied as you really are with your present life.
Why would I want to do that?
The clearer it becomes to you that you aren't satisfied with the kind of life you have been giving to yourself, the sooner you will welcome the possibility of a totally different life that isn't self-generated. Our feelings of unhappiness and incompleteness aren't born out of how Life has treated us, but by what we have called Life. Anger, disappointment, frustration or any of their skyrocketing opposites are only sensations. Calling our up and down feelings Real Life doesn't make them so, any more than calling a kitchen blender an airplane makes it capable of flight just because it hums and vibrates! Like a theme park ride, these habitual thoughts and feelings only appear to take you somewhere. In reality they are a ticket to nowhere -- except back to the need to ride again. As you become increasingly dissatisfied with where this kind of life has taken you, with what it has given you, you naturally begin to lose interest in its existence.
Why? What does this accomplish?
Since you are no longer automatically identifying with this limited world of up and down sensations, you start to become aware of a totally new kind of inner-world. Dimly, but definitely you can feel this calm, ever-expansive Higher Life calling to you. Go. Boldly leave your self-generated world behind.
But I can't even imagine who I'd be without all my usual feelings.
You will be that rare someone who experiences a real miracle. As you walk away from your own self-generated inner-life, you begin to discover that all the stimulating sensations you thought were giving you life were actually separating you from it. To your grateful astonishment you realize that self-stimulation pales next to being self-completed. Now you understand that real life is real satisfaction because as you leave the self-generated self behind, you step into the Real World where everything is already complete -- including you.
