Desire

Have you ever wondered why we desire?

Even as we enter into this world through the womb, we already desire. It may be to stop the pain childbirth has caused or maybe to fulfill hunger. Who knows..and it may depend…but even then at that time we probably desire. As simply newborns! Amazing! Desire doesn’t have to be thought of negatively, but it is often abused and it’s meaning misinterpreted.

But, is desire different than just “wanting”? Where does desire arise from? And more importantly, how can one control desire?

It seems like whatever it may be…wealth, fortune, power, materialistic objects, lust, revenge, happiness, knowledge, or whatever else crosses the mind that there is an attachment we develop to fulfill the desire. But what really happens once we fulfill a single desire? The mind continues to delude us and we seek a new desire. This cycle repeats itself over and over again. It is unyielding unless at the moment the desire enters our mind and we are consciously aware that it is there, then at that instance we grasp it, seek its source, and knowingly forget about it. Creating this type of total mindful self-awareness is the most difficult aspect of being able to control our desires. And self-awareness comes through practice, self-devotion, and being centered.

But how do we control our mind and become fully aware if our thoughts continue to jump from place to place, without boundaries and any end in sight? Meditation helps. The first few attempts at this may be challenging since the mind will wander with countless thoughts of about your present condition, your future, and just your general outlook on life. But I think that with time, our mind will start to ease off and we will be able to start to focus mentally on only those things which we truly need.

Just remember…

You can only count on yourself. You will meet people, cultivate friendships, build a family, and encounter strangers everywhere. But even so, you will still lose connections, people that once touched you will leave, your relationships will fade, and you will ultimately be alone. People tend to do as they please, and you will realize nothing can be done about it. So, why trust in someone only to be eventually broken? How many times will you let this go on?

On the contrary, just imagine…If you can live with yourself, if you can walk by faith and be true to yourself, then there will no longer be any dependence on someone else to keep you going. You will be truly content with your “aloneness”. But you will need some patience, since people are naturally social and seek interaction with one another. You will realize, though, over time that by developing an awareness of yourself through your habits, reactions, and thought process that you can look within yourself to keep moving and be freed from any sort of dependence. But, you will have to take the path alone. Just remember to believe in yourself.

Escaping from yourself

We all know that when we are stressed, tired, angry, upset, or disturbed that we can escape. We can leave and get relief. We can go someplace and return only if we so choose. We can get away from it all – the unyielding traffic, people we dislike, the painful pressures of life – so that we can heal, recover, refocus, and re-energize ourselves. While this is a common tendency that does provide some temporary relief, it is really just a mask. When we leave, when we choose to escape to someplace, we are experiencing something unusual because many times this choice is drastic, unplanned, and rather spontaneous. On our journey to this escape, our mind is racing. It is experiencing this escape, while at the same time clouding the events that led to the escape. It creates a mask of our  past so that the experiences of the escape can be filled. But ultimately, the mask is merely a temporary blur, since when we return back from our escape, the memories, the pain, the problem we left has not been erased at all. So, then we again fall into the cycle of dealing with our current circumstances, and keep hoping for another temporary escape in the times ahead. But, what we have forgotten to realize is that the external causes of our pain, our anguish, our discontent can never entirely be escaped. Something unnerving seems to always prod our mind.

What if you have been working on something for very long, and the success you have been seeking is finally yours, but now you no longer have someone to share it with? What if you fall in love at first sight, but then learn that the person you saw is actually blind and did not notice you at all? Life is full of such surprises. There always seems to be an obstacle to overcome, a struggle to be conquered, some conflict to get past. The mind just feeds off of this conflict and it is an aging battle. So then naturally, we want to escape it. But, while we can achieve some temporary relief by getting away from our circumstances, if in truth, our mind is the real source of all our conflict, then how can we escape from it? Where can you go?

Where can you go to escape from yourself ??
Right now, I can only see one place…You go within…

Thoughts on acceptance

How many of us strive for perfection in our lives? To be able to walk or sit with perfect posture, to have that perfect dress for that perfect evening, to come up with the perfect words on an important occasion, to attain the perfect figure for our body frame, to secure the most perfect friends, to perform our work perfectly well. It seems our minds constantly dwell on ways to perfect something in our life regardless of whether the object is physical like our body, or something external, such as, our social status. But what is the point of all this effort? What are we really seeking? It seems we do it with the premise that society will stop condemning us…stop judging us and actually accept us. The entire effort is based on escaping pain, so then we try to be the opposite and seek ways to change ourselves to be able to perfectly blend in or be above it all. In the hope to feel accepted, we do so much – we bend our will, compromise our character, and disguise our identity – yet all the while, none of these approaches are enough because they never embrace self-acceptance. Instead of that, what is really needed for acceptance is actually a transformation of ourselves.

A natural tendency exists in which we want to cling to happiness when it is there, and escape from pain whenever it is there. Someone compliments your shoes – it makes you happy and you cling to it. You find the perfect song to fit your mood – this makes you happy and you cling to it. But then, someone else shuns a part of your work – this is painful and you try to escape it. This human response is similar to the behavior of a pendulum that shifts from one end to another, where we are either happy that we are accepted, or we are miserable and want to escape. To transcend this natural human tendency involves accepting oneself through self-awareness.

You have anger, but you suppress it. You have desire, but you ignore it. You are happy, but your smile is half-hearted. You are upset, but you hide it.  In reality though, that which is suppressed becomes more powerful. It moves deep into your unconsciousness, and the darkness clouds your center. But the true idea of acceptance involves bringing everything to the surface. There is no need to suppress. Accept your animosity, accept your greed, your anger, your frustration, your doubt, your fear, your past. If sorrow is there don’t try to escape it – just let it be. When anger is there, don’t renounce it; just be aware of it and accept it without condemnation. It is to be transcended. You cannot change it. Don’t do anything, just be a witness. This type of awareness can be transforming. Just by being a watcher, just by seeing things as they come, you start to realize that when pain has come, sooner or later it will go, when happiness comes, unhappiness is actually hidden somewhere too. But by not clinging to or detaching ourselves from either side – happiness or pain -  we can remain in the middle, and recognize to accept ourselves unconditionally.

In The Book of Secrets, Osho says that “If you can watch without attraction and without repulsion you will fall in the middle, and once the pendulum stops in the middle you can look for the first time at what the world is…If you remain in the middle and the pendulum has stopped, if your consciousness is focused now, centered, then you know what reality is. Only a mind that is unmoving can know what the truth is. O Beloved, put attention neither on pleasure nor on pain, but between these (p 529).” When we are simply a witness to our attitudes, an awareness arises in us, and we no longer need to suppress them since we know they are there, and so then the anger, the greed, the sorrow just disappear because we accept it all. We are no longer bothered by what others say, whether they compliment or condemn because just by remaining in the middle, we become aware and we accept it all. So then, when we are aware, when we are really aware of who we are, then we accept all our imperfections, and we are transformed.

Take a look below into some enlightening thoughts on this topic from Osho:

“Stop judging yourself. Instead of judging, start accepting yourself with all the imperfections, all the frailties, all the mistakes,
all the failures. Don’t ask yourself to be perfect. That is simply asking for something that is impossible, and then you will feel
frustrated. You are a human being, after all.”

Thoughts on uniqueness

Many of us have heard the saying that we are all unique. But where does this uniqueness arise from? Just look all around and we meet people from all over with the same hobbies, tastes, opinions, and even sleep patterns like our own! Twins who share 100% of their genes. People with the same name as ours. A network of people who engage in advocating an idea that you also believe. A person who shares the same values as you. Someone who enjoys having the same desert as you. A friend who laughs at the same jokes that you do. All of these are things we can have common with someone. We are all human beings who are experiencing things, and some of these experiences collide and mesh together to give the indication of a connection with someone. So, if we have so many similarities, so many things in common, then what really signifies our uniqueness?

It is our existence.

It is our own individual existence that signifies our uniqueness. It is because we simply exist that each of us is unique. When we are born, we come into this world with a blank canvas, and on this canvas we can paint whatsoever we please. It can be filled with our hopes, with desire, with anguish, with joy, with conflict, with peace. It is a choice for each of us to make. Experiencing our behaviors, our actions, our most personal thoughts shape the canvas. So, our existing…our experiencing creates a different canvas for each of us.  And because our experiencing is continuous, dynamic, and always changing, our canvas can never be copied or replaced. It is a canvas that is truly unique.

Take a look below into some enlightening thoughts on this topic from Osho:

“There has never been a person like you before, there is nobody else like you right now in the whole world, and there will never be anybody like you.
Just see how much respect existence has paid to you. You are a masterpiece – unrepeatable, incomparable, utterly unique.”