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Eckhart Aurelius Hughes wrote: ↑July 10th, 2023, 2:17 pm
Different people tend to mean different things by the word motivate, and, by extension, the word motive.
Word for word, two people might both seem to ask the same exact question, such as "What was the murderer's motive?"
Or, they might ask, "What motivated the murderer?" Or, "What motivated the alcoholic to drink?" Or, "What motivated the adulterer to have the affair?"
Of all those people together, one might collectively ask, What were their shared motives?
However, despite two speakers' words being the same, the meaning might be very different between two different speakers who ask those questions.
To really answer your question accurately, let me first ask you, how do you define the word 'motivate'? In other words, what do you mean by the word 'motivate' when you use it?
In any case, let me say that I hold my inner peace (a.k.a. consistent true happiness) as very valuable to me and as an absolute top priority. As such, I tend to do my best to avoid what most people would call 'motivation'. Because I value my inner peace (a.k.a. happiness) so deeply, I work hard to be un-motivated and to have relatively little desire, for a human, that is.
Many philosophies and religious traditions have taught that desire is the root of all suffering.
In my book, I state a similar but slightly different premise: I say desire is suffering. In the lingo of my book, they are two words for the same thing.
More roughly speaking, one could say I do my best to desire what I have and only what I have. But, of course, the more common word for that is gratitude rather than desire.
For example, I do my best to not covet my neighbor's wife; that is, of course, assuming she isn't already in my bed. 
An elaboration on how such intentional de-motivation can play out more practically is in the chapter of my book titled, "Do Less, Better".
mrlefty0706 wrote: ↑February 13th, 2024, 8:45 pm
I do not understand your response that you are un-motivated especially when it comes to your family. You will do whatever you can to help your two children be successful in life. If you are unmotivated then you would just let them grow up without any parental guideance. Can you explain this to me?
Hi,
mrlefty0706,
Thank you for your question!
First, I would suggest you re-read the very first sentence in my post above to which you are replying and asking about.
That very first sentence was this:
"Different people tend to mean different things by the word motivate, and, by extension, the word motive."
How do you define the word
'motive'? How do you define the word
'motivate'?
Those aren't rhetorical questions. I am actually asking you. It will be effectively impossible to communicate with you about this and understand each other if I don't know what you mean by the equivocal term and how it differs from what I mean by it.
Regardless, moving forward a bit, I didn't say I
am un-motivated. If you read the post carefully above, what I said is that I do my best to be as un-motivated (i.e. lacking desire for things I don't already have) as humanly possible.
Those last three words ("as humanly possible") are a key qualifier.
Scott/Eckhart is still a human. He is a vegetation, but his mouth still waters at the smell or sight of tasty meat.
"Motivation" as I typically use the word refers roughly to the opposite of gratitude. Gratitude is desiring what you already have, and thus more accurately of not desiring at all. Motivation is a state of desiring what you don't have.
Instead of constantly thinking that what I have in my present is not good enough by desiring ever-more, I instead do my best to have no desire for anything that I don't already have and instead practice gratitude and presence.
To take your example with the kids, perhaps it's true that if I was completely un-motivated (a.k.a. completely without desire) to a totally impossible inhuman degree, then I would likely neither feed/raise my kids nor feed myself. My kids would go unraised (by me, instead being raised by their mom solely) and I would die of dehydration within days. This reminds me of this quote from a lecture by Alan Watts:
"They say in India of a jivanmukta (a man who is liberated in this world) that he has to cultivate a few mild bad habits in order to stay in the body. Because if he were absolutely perfect he would disappear from manifestation. And so the great yogi—maybe he smokes a cigarette, or has a bad temper occasionally: something that keeps him human. And that little thing is very important. It’s like the salt in a stew. It grounds him. Well, this is another way of saying that even a very great sage, a great Buddha, will have in him a touch of regret that life is fleeting, because if he doesn’t have that touch of regret, he’s not human and he’s incapable of compassion towards people."
Imagine a scale of 0 - 100, where 0 is a state of absolute desirelessness (a.k.a. un-motivation) and of maximum gratitude and presence, and 100 is a state of maximum desire/motivation and thus a utterance of gratitude and presence. In other words, 0 is state of being infinitely happy with you have in your present such that you don't at all have any desire for anything more, and 100 is a state where you are maximally unhappy with what you have in your present and totally and utterly absorbed in wanting more.
I am saying that I am to get as close to 0
as humanly possible, with the knowledge that is not going to get me to 0. Maybe the closet to 0 a human can get is 5. The fact that I wrote "as much as humanly possible" in the post to which you replied is key.
In practical terms, what does that all mean, one might ask. You can take the example of my kids again. For a human, I am very far away from being helicopter parent. The average parent is much closer to being a helicopter parent and/or control freak than I am.
In contrast, I live in such a way that if one of my kids got hit by car tomorrow and died, I wouldn't then be regretfully thinking,
"I wish I had hugged him tighter and longer yesterday, instead of scolding him and making him feeling naught and bad to raise him to be an adult." No, instead I hug them tighter and longer today, and don't squander my time with them by setting the harmful example of being someone who treats the future as a false idol, a topic my book discusses in great detail. Many parents are so obsessed with how they want their kids to turn out one day in the future at some arbitrary adult age that's of no more real importance than the age they are now that those parents squander their time with their kids now by being a control freak towards them and unwittingly teaching their kids their own ungrateful future-obsessed control-freak habits instead of teaching their kids--via their example as a role model--the value of presence, gratitude, inner peace, and radical acceptance.
Kids learn by example. If you smack your kid every time he heats peanut butter, you don't teach him to not eat peanut butter; you teach him to smack people. You teach him to use aggression and bullying to get his way.
I am proud to be far less motivated as a parent than helicopter parents and control freak parents. I am proud to be far less motivated than abusive parents, many of whom surely believe they are doing what's in their child's best interests in terms of the the future version of that child (i.e. engaging in what my book calls toxic codependency with your selves over time, except using their child's future self as the false idol instead of the human in the mirror).
In contrast, I teach my kids the value of minimizing desire (a.k.a. motivation) and of instead happily engaging in loving presence, acceptance, and gratitude by being a role model who embodies those traits for them.
There is an important chapter in my book titled, "Do Less, Better". I teach my kids that by being a role model, meaning by doing less myself.
In contrast, restless doing-addicts teach their kids to be restless doing-addicts. Control freaks teach their kids to be control freaks. Shoulders teach their kids to miserably should on themselves and others. I never tell my kids they "should" do or be anything, not now nor later, and so they do grow up they won't have a nasty critical voice in their voice in their constantly shoulding on them and making them feel like they aren't good enough. How we parents talk to them know is generally how they will talk to themselves in their own head for the rest of their lives.
The same way we pass on genetic traits to our biological children, we pass on our memetic traits to the children for whom we are role models. In the long run, they don't do as we say; they do as we do.
So, especially for the sake of my kids, and especially for when they are watching, I do my absolute best to be as
un-motivated (a.k.a.
un-desiring of that which I don't have) as humanly possible, to not covet and such, and instead as much as humanly possible engage in gratitude and gracious radical acceptance with deep consistent spiritual fulfillment and invincible free-spirited inner peace (a.k.a. true happiness).
For me, rebelliousness and free-spiritedness (a.k.a. self-discipline) go hand-in-hand, but perhaps for my kids they won't need as much cycle-breaking rebellion to be free and so utterly unlike so many generations before us, with their obsessive doing, miserable motivation, and hungry spiritual starvation--always wanting more, never satisfied, always feeling that they and the world are not good enough.
I show them by example as a role model what it means to practice presence and be happily fulfilled and appreciative, rather than future-obsessed and/or longing/desiring/wanting more (a.k.a. being motivated).
Motivation as I use the term is generally just a symptom of unhappiness, misery, and a lack of grateful free-spirited inner peace. In other words, motivation is just a symptom of being unfulfilled, particularly in the sense of being spiritually unfulfilled.
So I do my best to be a role model who shows my kids via my example what it means to be spiritually fulfilled and thus un-desiring/unmotivated. I show them via example how to be happy, truly happy, in the sense of having free-spirited inner peace and practicing gracious grateful presence.
With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott
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