Do you know that desire is actually an energy?
How do you handle the desire energy?
Is it wrong to have desires?
Desire is one of the major driving forces in human life. It is the energy of desires that makes us get up from the bed daily to run our life. Most of the time we are driven by either desire or fear – our likes and dislikes come from desire. As a result, we have so many desires, quite often we feel we don’t have enough energy to fulfil all our desires.
As you may be aware that I have started the coaching for spiritual entrepreneurs from my last article, this understanding about desire which I learned from my Guru, a living Avatar, Paramahamsa Nithyananda, (fondly known as Swamiji) has clicked with me in my own journey, hence I am sharing them with the world.
Firstly, you need to know the types of desires. Unless you are clear about the difference, you will not feel happy wherever you are. Fundamentally, there are two types of desires – true desires vs borrowed desires. Borrowed desires are called wants, and true desires are our needs. True desires carry the energy for their fulfilment because these desires are always selfless desires as they benefit both individual and humanity. Only such desires carry the energy of the universe for fulfilment. The desire that is pure and not directed towards any object or person is simply an overflowing energy that is called desire energy. The difference between need and want is complicated with greed. The moment greed enters, it becomes a borrowed desire driven by an object or a person. A borrowed desire only incur more and more agamya karma (the pattern of doing action in unawareness and accumulating karma or doing the actions even though you know it is wrong).
Second, you need to remove the confusion between desires and fantasies. The knowledge and your ability to take action should always be in tune with the desire energy. When you have a true desire, you must channel it properly, put it into action and use it for the good of all. Then it forms a circle of desire leading to better knowledge and action which, in turn, leads to clearer desires.
However, if the desire energy gets converted into too much knowledge and little action, then we will end up having fantasies. On the other hand, if the desire energy gets converted into more actions and less knowledge, then we end up working blindly. Only when we are authentic and integrated with our true desire, there is no conflict and the conversion of desires energy to knowledge and action happens properly.
Third, you need to be aware that having conflicting and complicated desires create confusion. See, in the morning when you wake up, you want to have a cup of tea but by the time you have the tea, you say you want something else! If you are aware of the original passion with which you have chosen the tea, then you enjoyed the tea itself. You will realize that the enjoyable experience with which you sipped the tea will simply fulfil you. You should be aware that any desire that has no depth but has control over you is a crime against your consciousness. If you live one desire, you will understand that desire has no depth in your life. It is just skin-deep. Desire is not wrong. It is the conflicts and contradictions that you create in your system that is crime. The reasoning which is fighting with the consciousness – that is the crime which not only drains your energy but also creates unnecessary confusion! Desire from the space of completion brings fulfilment.
According to Swamiji, he once said that “Any desire that is not fulfilled will create a conflict in you. Anything that has become as a basic cognisance process will not stay in you as a dead weight. It is the internal conflict due to unfulfilled desire which is responsible for depression, mental cancer that can destroy your very balance to exist. The sources of our mental cancer is the unfaced authentic experiences of life.” Hence it is important you live your true desire in this birth.
Finally, in Vedic scripture, there is an important truth – Sat Chit Ananda – it means existing is Sat, knowing that you exist is Chit, celebrating your existence is Ananda. Existing (Sat) is eternal and because it is eternal, the desire to expand is also eternal. So the desire to exist is not something separate from existing. As consciousness, we exist from the source of life. Desire to exist is from the same source and desire to expand is also from the same very source, any authentic honest desire to expand becomes existence just like you exist. By nature, we are eternal, our existence is eternal, and so are our desires. In whatever direction we want to expand, we are going to be expanding. Hence, all we need to do is not to destroy our desires, instead channel the desires in the direction we want by not grabbing from others or by abusing others. Desire for expansion and desire to exist are natural qualities of life because existence is in eternal expansion. As such your desire to expand is not a crime, the desire to expand by abusing or destroying others is a crime.
In essence, the true desire is the desire for expansion but only with the knowledge to convert your desire energy into action that determines if you will manifest a new reality. When we work without unnecessarily thinking about the result, all our energies will be used towards realizing the desire. The energy will not be dissipated in imagining the results. The power of desire, iccha shakti, will be converted to the power of action, Kriya shakti. The desire may initially be a goal, but what is important is the path that the action is what you must focus on and not the end result. This ability to expand in directing your desire energy to your purpose of birth grows your consciousness enormously. When this conscious alignment happens naturally, you will simply win the game of life because matter follows consciousness, everything starts following you. You experience that you are the Source of everything. Namaste 😀