When you are on your own at home, you will think that it is enough if you have a home and car for yourself. You will feel relaxed at this thought. You will feel moments of gratitude and fulfillment. After some time, when you step out of your house in your car, and stop by at a traffic light, what happens? A Mercedes Benz pulls up beside your car…and your mind simply switches its thinking. You start thinking that your car is just no good. You start thinking that it is high time that you bought a new car - if not a Mercedes Benz.
Just a few minutes earlier you were happy with your own things, but now what has happened? You are starting to work out a new desire, a borrowed desire. Be very clear: This is not your own desire. It is a borrowed desire belonging to someone else. It is the desire of the owner of the Benz car. This is how you start working out others’ desires in your mind as a result of comparison and jealousy.
You may never have felt the need for a refrigerator in your house, but if your neighbor buys a refrigerator, immediately you will feel that you cannot do without it! Immediately you will find all the reasons in the world why you need a refrigerator. All these days you were managing without a refrigerator! Nothing has changed, but what has happened? Your mind has stepped in with comparison.
Of course, you will never own up to borrowed desires. It happens so subtly in your mind, that the exact source of the borrowed desire goes unsaid. It is a cunning and subtle game of the mind. And we will always say that we are not bothered about others.
A small story:
One man returned to his neighborhood after almost 10 years.
He went around the neighborhood with his friend.
He was surprised to see the many changes in the place.
He commented to this friend, “Prosperity has changed the face of this whole neighborhood!”
The friend replied, “No, not prosperity, just plain jealousy.”
We are all the time trying to beat the other. When you are after borrowed desires, you will never stop, because when you are on the verge of realizing any one of them, another borrowed desire will come up from somewhere and you will be on the track once more!
You will keep running because you are not centered within yourself. Your center keeps changing. Your center is on other people, not inside yourself! And their center is elsewhere, not inside themselves! Imagine how much you have to run, how much you have to pull and push according to the mass sway of off-centric thoughts and emotions! You become a puppet.
I tell you: Every time you want something, sit by yourself and think if you really want it or you want it because someone else had it. Do an honest analysis of each of your desires when they surface. Drop all your prestige problems and do a self-analysis. If you can’t drop your prestige when you are alone, how will you drop it when you are with people?
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This excerpt has been taken from the book: Guaranteed Solutions.
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