In Seeking: How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting. And why that’s dangerous. Yoffe talks about how the brain is hard-wired to seek. A little while ago, maybe in a some somewhat esoteric post, I addressed non-Seeking. But what’s interesting in this article is that the author suggests that we need to give the brain a rest from seeking. Again I think science has found a reflection of spiritual reality in the material form.

However our Zen forefathers basically said that to discover ones own true nature one must stop seeking, even seeking after enlightenment. If you correlate that with the idea that we find what we look for, then seeking and seeing are inextricably linked. And that leads to the idea in the Voice of the Silence that we must be deaf and blind to all external phenomena.

In The Labors of Hercules the story of Scorpio concludes when Hercules lifts the Hydra into the light of die and consequently all of its heads to die, but one. A. A. Bailey suggested that the immortal head was sexuality, if I remember rightly. Maybe I don’t. But perhaps this immortal head was seeking. There is no doubt though that sexuality drives a whole lot of seeking of its own. And the sociobiologists would argue that sexual competition drives the need for status, for wealth, etc. I tend to agree.

Yet seeking is very much in the mind. And I think being mindful of this is a very useful tool to aid ones practice. I would suggest that letting go of seeking enables one to be receptive to one’s true nature.