It seems to me that we all have two sides to our motivation. Its like two little selves, one on each shoulder. One little me is dressed in tie dye robes, has long hair and hasn't showered or shaved for months. This is the hippy in us. The hippy is motivated by our desires and needs. Freedom and excitement are Hippy's mantra.
On the other shoulder is a little self dressed in polished shoes and pressed pleated pants. They have a thick belt with a polished brass belt buckle. Their jacket is tan or olive green and adorned with metals and ribbons. This is the dictator. The dictator in you wants to build the self up into something great. Strength of will, control and discipline are its mantra. Scorn of anything which strays from the path of "rightness" is quick to flow from its mouth.
We all have to deal with these two tendencies throughout our lives. At times the hippy is dominant and we fall into sloth and addiction. At times the dictator is dominant and we work really really hard at meeting our goals and forcing ourselves to comply with a strict regimen and practice. The more uncomfortable we are, the more accomplished we feel.
In my own experience, switching between the two has been like pushing a pendulum. Through force of will, I would push myself to do all the things I felt I wanted to do to meet my goals of becoming someone whom I thought I wanted to be. I would work long hours and concentrate with intensity. On the cushion I would try to force myself into a state of non-thought. This approach only seemed to increase the thoughts; many of which were negative. I would scold myself for non-compliance and for every "failure". I would cut myself off from others and fall into a world of darkness. Small talk with others seemed like a "waste of time" to me.
When I finally couldn't hold the pendulum on the side of discipline any longer, I would collapse into a type of exhaustion and the hippy would take over. At first is was such a relief to take a break from the shoulds and shouldn'ts of the dictator, but after a while the desires became obsessions and the "needs" only grew. The dictator wouldn't really go away either. He would always be in the background with a scowl on his face. Sloth and too much freedom led to addiction and non-functionality.
Freedom from this pendulum of pain only came when I saw the dictator and hippy for what they were: manifestations of ego.
The Buddha also went through this process. He was at first living in a palace where all his needs and desires were met. When he finally saw the nature of suffering and was highly motivated by his love for others, to find a way out of suffering, he started on the path of asceticism. He forced himself to deny his desires. Over time, this path not only nearly killed him, it hardened his ego. It wasn't until he overheard a musician telling a student that the strings of the instrument shouldn't be too tight or too loose, that he realized what he had been doing. It wasn't long after this his ego subsided and real freedom came. When his self was seen through fully, he was finally able to fully connect with life and he became a beacon of hope for this world.
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