Stop Resisting Your Desires
There is a huge misunderstanding in the minds of many spiritually oriented people in that they think desire leads to suffering. Nothing could be far from truth. Desires don’t cause suffering, it’s the resistance to a born desire that leads to suffering. Once a desire is born, you can consider it manifested in the non-physical realm and it starts attracting a reality onto itself. The forward movement of life is created through desires, and hence every desire causes life to expand. If you resist the desire, after it’s born, your energy starts conflicting with the movement of life and hence you suffer.
By desire I simply mean “pure desire” or desire which is aligned with life. There is also something called “Egoic wanting” (Or what I called “negative desire”) which I have discussed towards the end of this writing.
Your desires cause expansion in life
Every desire that arises in you, causes an expansion in life. In other words, life becomes more, thanks to the desire that you set forth. Every desire that arises is permanently “born”, and there is no regression (or going back) from there. Once the desire is born, it starts attracting a reality onto itself and the main component in the reality is “you”. In other words, the desire that you gave birth to now starts “pulling” you so it can manifest physically.
Suffering arises when you “resist” your desires. The most common ways in which the Ego resists desires are as below
– It tells you, that you are not worthy of living a reality that you desire
– It tells you, that desiring is sinful or wrong
– It tells you, enjoying life is not right when there are so many other suffering
– It tells you, that it’s not “possible” for your desire to manifest
– It tells you, that you are just not good enough, that life does not care for you
– It tells you, that you should not desire
– It makes you feel guilty about certain desires
– It’s constantly judging your desires
– It makes you think that you have to “work hard” to get to your desires
– It tells you that you can’t have joy without “working hard” for it
– It believes in “no pain no gain” adage (which is simply opposite of how life works)
It’s immensely insane to resist your own abundance and well-being, but that’s exactly what the Ego movement does by contradicting your own desires.
Some simple truth about life
Here’s how life looks at your pure desires
– Life is not a “person” who judges you or reprimands you for your desires.
– Life is a movement of consciousness, it’s free and “non judging”.
– None of your desires are too big or too small for life.
– If your environment has the ability to generate a desire in you, it has the ability to manifest it to complete fruition.
– Life will never make you desire something you can’t have.
– Every desire is manifested as soon as it’s born, after that it just pulls a physical reality onto itself
– Life does not ask you to “work hard” for your desires.
– Life will move you towards the manifestation of your desires, it will inspire the right action in you.
– Life knows what’s right for you and brings forth a reality that aligns with the essence of your desire.
Be honest with yourself and see if a “thought” is coming from a place of fear and lack, or if it’s coming from a place of love and joy. A pure desire is a thought of “wanting” that comes from a place of love and joy. A negative desire is a thought of “wanting” that comes from a place of fear and lack. A negative desire is always in conflict with life.
There is a difference between “Pure Desire” and “Egoic Wanting”
Pure desire arises spontaneously from the space of your being. If you simply let go of trying to understand or manipulate the desire, it’s will easily move you towards its manifestation. However, if the Ego tries to force the desire, or judge it, there is an immediate resistance to the movement of life. Remember that the movement of life is activated through a “desire” or an intention and any resistance to it causes suffering.
“Egoic wanting” (or Negative desire) arises from fear. Jealously, contempt, guilt, anger, hatred and obsession, can lead the Ego to “want” a reality which is inherently not in alignment with the “energy” of life. For example, the desire to see your ex-boyfriend, or ex-girlfriend, suffer because they left you, is an “Egoic wanting” (I like to call it “negative desire”). Life will never support you in a “negative desire” because the energy of such a intent is opposite of the energy of life. A “negative desire” has an energy of fear or hatred, while life is based on the energy of love and joy.
To desire a beautiful house, to desire a beautiful relationship, to desire a healthy body, to desire some luxurious settings, to desire a fast car, to desire a happy environment, to desire a joyful career are all “pure desires” and are aligned with the energy of life. As you can sense the content of all these desires is “joy”. However, when you get too specific about your desire there arise a content of “fear” or “lack” in your energy. For example, when you desire a beautiful relationship, life brings it forth for you easily, but when you desire to possess a “specific person”, there is an energy of fear or lack in it, and thus it becomes conflicted with life’s movement (and thus becomes a source of suffering)
Life is abundant, and it can bring forth everything that you desire for your comfort and well-being. Stop living from an idea of lack and fear. Be flexible enough to allow life to bring forth the reality that is in alignment with joy, peace and love, don’t try to force life to move in a particular way. Life has the bigger picture. Once a desire arises in you, just relax and allow yourself to be pulled by the movement of life generated by the desire.
Dear Sen
Thank You for the post. I request some clarification on some things you mentioned here. My question is it possible to desire without having a particular object in mind (Some say that pure desire without any object associated to it is enlightenment). However, most people have an image of an object when they desire. They could imagine a car they saw that they desire or they might desire a specific person of the opposite sex. So I request clarification about what you mean when you say that getting too specific about a desire or desiring to possess a particular person/object can bring in resistance. Or when you use the term possess are you referring to the identity that a desiring person develops through the object in their mind when they desire.
Thanks for your help and time.
Regards
Sanjay
A lot of people confuse the term “desire” with “craving” – however they are two different aspects with totally different meanings. Desire is purely a thought of creation (to experience a certain reality), craving is the process of feeling incomplete in the absence of the physical manifestation of the desire and thus suffering this feeling of incompleteness. When you rest in your wholeness or your “beingness”, you can have a desire but not “crave”it in any way because you are no longer looking for “wholeness”, or a sense of fulfillment, in the manifestation of a desire – this is a huge revelation for a lot of people who automatically equate desire with craving. When one is not awakened one always associate happiness with the physical possession of a desire – this is what leads to craving, because you stop being happy in the “now” looking for happiness in some future place when the desire gets manifested. When one awakens to their “beingness”, they realize that they are whole right now and they don’t need “anything”, or anyone, to make to them whole – in this state of being, desire can arise in the mind but there is no “craving” in the being.
A desire by itself does not create resistance, it’s when the mind starts craving it or analyzing it through the lens of lack based “conditioned” thinking (by working on “specifics” or trying to figure out ways to manifest it through its limited intelligence), that a lot resistance gets created in your energy field which in turn delays the smooth unfolding of the process of manifestation of your desired reality. The truth is that the mind has no clue what’s the best way to manifest a reality, it has no clue who is the right person for a good relationship or what’s the right timing for a particular venture – this is the limitation of the mind that it does not have the “big picture” – so when the mind tries to get too specific and starts making “effort” to figure out things or try to get things by force, it just ends up being rooted in a vibration of fear, competitiveness or lack/hatred. When you are totally identified with the mind, the domain of struggle is what you live in because that’s how the mind operates when it tries to manifest a desire through its efforts. But when you rest as a space of awareness, in your beingness, you rest in your wholeness and thus are not craving any desires but are not in resistance to its manifestation either – you are not resisting desires or craving it, it’s just a place of wholeness where you simply allow physicality to operate in harmony.
Thanks Sen for the clarification!
Sen,
How can you obtain your desires, physically, and not be afraid that you are becoming vain by giving into them? How can you change yourself physically to feel attractive such as losing weight, surgery, etc. and equally at the same time, feel that your worth is more than that of physicality. How can you realize that there is more to you and life and joy than physicality, and at the same time, go through with the physical change…isn’t that a contradiction? I feel a loss of character by giving into a physical change. I feel like that it’s taking over who I am, and it makes me feel vain for doing so, in turn making me feel as though physicality is all there is to me since I went through with the desire.
When you, as the aware being, is totally identified with the body/mind without knowing your truth as the wholeness of life that you are, it creates a “narrow vision” of life. When your total identification is only with the physical realm, you are bound to be attached to suffering because everything in this physical realm is “temporary”, all experiences are fleeting and short-lived, and all bodies go through dissolution in their temporary life-span. But the pointer is not that you start shunning the physicality, rather the point is that you bring a balance in your being by getting to know your “other side” – the non-physical nature of who you are. Who you are is in essence the source energy whose intent created this body, and this body is functioning in your awareness. Without “remembering” your nature as the source energy, you will just forget yourself in the physical identity. The present suffering you are going through can help awaken you to your true nature and hence allow you to be free, for life, from the imprisonment of mind identification. Can you sense that there is way more to you that just this body? Allow this knowing to be the beacon that you use to start getting to know your true nature as the universal consciousness.
When you really know your true self as the wholeness of life you are not afraid of physicality, you don’t try to run away from it or detach from it, you just become free to participate in it and enjoy the experiences that it affords. If there is a desire in your mind, it will be brought to fruition by your life-stream – your desires give rise to new creation in life as a whole. There is nothing wrong with desires or their manifestations, the only problem is with total identification with the physical which causes suffering because of its “temporary” nature. “Be in the world but not of it”, it just means enjoy your physicality but from position rooted in knowing your truth as the wholeness of life and resting in this space of wholeness. Physicality allows life to enjoy the physical experiences and “joy” is the natural vibration of the life energy that you are – it’s not about giving up physicality to find joy in your being, it’s about finding joy in your being and enjoying physicality freely as a result.
I know who I am but I feel that I am losing who I am due to this physical ateration because I feel it wasn’t my whole self anymore and I feel I am messing it. I feel that doing this was vain, so I suppose that thinking in that sense makes me realize that I actually am not? I feel that enjoying it and liking it will make me vain and associating only with the physicalness of life.
To feel negative about enjoying physicality (through terming yourself as vain) is like defeating the very purpose of you coming into physicality. You made the choice to come into physicality to enjoy the physical experiences, there is no judgment in the wholeness of life towards you because you are life. You are eternally a pure positive being, and your core nature is love, nothing can change that – and you cant “lose” it, you can only forget it now and then when you believe the negativity of the mind. As this physical body you have the opportunity to enjoy physical experiences and it’s a just a short journey (like a joy ride on a roller coaster), soon this body will dissolve and you will move into a new experience through a different expression of physicality. As long as you have this body/mind, enjoy it expressions – there is nothing wrong with wanting to look good, since that’s your desire right now that’s what’s manifesting for you right now (don’t try to figure out what you will feel like in the future, or when you are old, because by then your mindset would be totally different and your desires will be totally different). Just stay with what is “now” your desire, and enjoy its expression. If you truly know who you are (as the energy whose vibration is love/joy), you will not feel negative about enjoying physicality – it’s only when you don’t know who you are that you feel guilty about your enjoyment of physicality. Who you are in your essence is already pure positive energy, and love, and all judgments only arise in the mind. You cannot ever “lose” who you are in essence, if you have such a notion that means you just have conceptual understanding of who you are without really “experiencing” your wholeness. The truth is that the only way you can align with your life-stream is when you align with your joy on a moment to moment basis (don’t think right now about what you will be thinking when you are old or what you will be feeling then, it’s absurd to project yourself into some future and guess what it would feel like. Stay with what is right now and allow yourself the freedom to align with the joy of the moment).