This morning I thought of this passage from A Course in Miracles and it reminded me of all the posturing and futile seeking that I see in the PUA community, in the community of women seeking a “special” relationship, and sometimes even in the spiritual community.

I see people trying to find happiness by counting up the number of women they’ve had sex with, or by locking a man down into a “commitment,” or by acquiring status symbols or “social proof.”

I see people trying to justify monogamy and discounting spirituality as “woo woo.” I see people saying they need scientific proof of what is obvious to anyone who takes even a moment to look within himself.

And yet, when I get people into HBR sessions, no matter who they are, no matter how much romantic “success” they’ve had, no matter whether they are married or single, no matter how much money they make, the feelings of alienation are always the same … and it all comes down to this:

Lesson 182: I will be still an instant and go home.

This world you seem to live in is not home to you. And somewhere in your mind you know that this is true. A memory of home keeps haunting you, as if there were a place that called you to return, although you do not recognize the voice, nor what it is the voice reminds you of. Yet still you feel an alien here, from somewhere all unknown. Nothing so definite that you could say with certainty you are an exile here. Just a persistent feeling, sometimes not more than a tiny throb, at other times hardly remembered, actively dismissed, but surely to return to mind again.

No one but knows whereof we speak. Yet some try to put by their suffering in games they play to occupy their time, and keep their sadness from them. Others will deny that they are sad, and do not recognize their tears at all. Still others will maintain that what we speak of is illusion, not to be considered more than but a dream. Yet who, in simple honesty, without defensiveness and self-deception, would deny he understands the words we speak?

We speak today for everyone who walks this world, for he is not at home. He goes uncertainly about in endless search, seeking in darkness what he cannot find; not recognizing what it is he seeks. A thousand homes he makes, yet none contents his restless mind. He does not understand he builds in vain. The home he seeks can not be made by him. There is no substitute for Heaven. All he ever made was hell.

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So today, before you seek happiness in yet another pussy, yet another partner, yet another dead end, ask yourself: how many times will I reenact this ritual before I am honest with myself and acknowledge that this will never get me what I want?