For all the people who are on the spiritual path and who wants to reach final goal of realizing the Ultimate Truth, Desire is the arch enemy. It is the quintessential aspect of ones self which every one tries to conquer or destroy. We have tried to starve it with non desiring practices, we tried to blast it with Kriyas, Pranayams and Kundalini yoga, we have tried every trick in the books and even online yogic-net. In the end most of us end up flat on our faces tired and exhausted.
Why don't we just pause for a moment and understand what exactly this DESIRE is ? What causes the creation of it? What is the fuel behind it? What are its characteristics?
Once we can understand Desires way of functioning we will be in a better position to deal with it. I am hereby jotting down my understanding of Desire's characteristics and functioning. What is written down is based on my experiences and understanding, any body can agree or disagree with my observations. If you want to add to what are listed below, please feel free to do so.
1. Desire is a tool for survival
Nature has made provisions in our system so that human survival continues and Desire is one of them. What ever action we take to survive comes out of our desires. Our Desire to survive is the greatest of all desires. It is in us right from the moment of Birth and will guide us through out our lives. Almost 90% of our actions everyday is to fulfill this Desire to survive. We eat, drink, go to office and reproduce to fulfill this Desire.
The struggle starts only when we want go against it and the whole path of spirituality is to annihilate and dissolve ourselves, which is exactly the opposite of survival. Unless and until our desire to vaporize and become one with nature is dominating, our Desire for survival will guide us and will be the only option which we will follow.
2. Desires are on many levels
Desires can be on the levels of Body, Mind, Emotion and Energy.
Desires on physical level will lead to actions like eating, grooming, excretion, sex and other bodily functions. These are the basic desires which takes care of the functionality, health and survival of our body.
Desires on the level of Mind, leads to thoughts, ideas, plans etc., It leads us to do and achieve various things in our life. Our desire to be a leader, to be famous, to achieve a goal in life are some examples of the Mind level desires. (To know more about how Mind works see the article on Characteristics of The Mind)
Emotional desires are the need to be loved and to be cared. The whole dating industry runs on these desires.
The greatest of the all desires is to get Enlightened, to become God. This is on the energy level which most of us have not experienced. We mat think about enlightenment and stuff but most of us or on the level of mind and emotions and have not experienced the energy level desire to dissolve.
3. Unconscious desire is Pre-programmed
Most of our desires are repetitive and programmed. For example once the clock strikes 1.00 Pm we get the desire to have lunch, once we see a sexy girl or a man we get the desire to posses her/him, we see a deliciously good looking Ice Cream our mouth starts watering and we start desiring to grab it. These are all desires which happens when we are not conscious of ourselves, our thought process or our physical cravings. This stimuli - reaction processes gets programmed our some periods and the more we perform the actions unconsciously the more stronger and deeper the desires become.
If we can maintain a distance and observe ourselves, we slowly realize how Zombie like we do our actions without any consciousness and discretion.The more we observe the more we get to know about the whole Desire system.
4. Unconsciousness is the fuel for Desire's strength
The only way we can break the whole Desire factory is to become more and more conscious The more unconscious we are about our action, our thoughts and our emotions, the stronger our desires become. Our Desires feeds on our unconsciousness and getting conscious of ourselves is the only way to break this Desire system.
5. Desires cannot be destroyed
We can try our whole life, but we will never be able to stop or destroy all our desires. Desires are necessary to survive. If we don't have the desire to eat, to drink we will just die. So there is no point of fighting with them. The best approach to win over Desires to become completely conscious of our desires and keep them at distance. Consciousness weakens our desires. Eventually desires will no more have control on us, instead we fulfill them at our discretion that out of compulsion.
So I wish all the best to my fellow seekers in the Journey of Understanding Ourselves and Finding Freedom.
JKS
To know more about our Habits and how to break them. Please see How to Break Habits and find Freedom?
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