What else is on your mind?

You want to be enlightened - You're unhappy with your mess.

You wish to align with Tao - You feel strongly you are a separate ego.

You strive to be happy - You are admitting sadness.

You would like a life of balance - You focus mainly on one set of information.

The simple life is appealing - Your mess seems complex.

You see peace of mind as something to work for - Inner turmoil is yours.

The story of you, known as "My Life, I" Starring 'My Me Me Mine' has a constructed past and a predicted or desired future, and it has a now. This now is not different for any one person on this planet, only the past and future IDEAS are what separates one person from another. Added to this now is the forming, the potential, the inertia of past and future, but they do not exist, they emerge from this now which is shared by each human, in pleasure, in suffering, in balance, in sleep, in enlightenment, in anguish. These labels live in potential, in the mind.

You may well say that the situation of one bereaving a loss, being directly tortured, or in some other position would be genuinely suffering in the present and they are different to one lounging in some material pleasure zone, but I'm pointing back from that which is produced in the mind. I'm pointing to the mind of the Sage. Absolute presence, perhaps the mind-less, one who has deterred-mind.

That people seek alignment with Tao or other releases and this is in truth a self definition of "not being that" then they must have some conceptualization as what the mind of a Sage is, they must, in forming this mental image, in contrast to their own life story, have decided the mind of the Sage is X and they are Y, and they want for Y = X.

Yet Y is defining X as hot contributes to defining cold.

The true Sage then is not enlightened or seeking enlightenment (or truth, completeness, wisdom, ... of Tao), they have not defined themselves as Seer or Seeker, Sage or not, they have surely just made a startling and simple realization that there is oneness and there are ideas and stories of infinite multiplicity. To be caught by the ideas is to move from "=" to "X and Y" (Where X and Y can be; happy and sad, Enlightened and not, aligned with Tao or not, right and wrong.... etc). There seems to be your only choice; The story of I Me Me Mine or the simple presence where the potential energy with its nature of moving the mind is not stirred up.