Recognise your true desires

FEAR and desire are the fundamental energies that drive our lives. We act either out of a desire to achieve something, or out of a fear of not wanting to experience something. Attraction and repulsion are not merely forces of molecules, but also essential to human behaviour.

One of the major driving forces in human life is desire. If you look into your life, you can see most of the time we are driven by either desire or fear. We have so many desires and many times we feel we don’t have the energy to fulfil them. According to the Jain tradition, the Divine sends us with enough energy and capacity to fulfil all our desires. But most of us don’t feel this way. Why?

There is a difference between our true desires and ‘borrowed’ desires. Our true desires are called our ‘needs’. Borrowed desires are called our ‘wants’. We have enough energy to fulfil our true desires or needs. What are our true desires?

During the Life Bliss Program Level 2 (Nithyananda Spurana Program), we have a session where people are asked to make a list of their desires, their needs and wants. Then they meditate on these desires. At the end of the meditation, I ask them to recollect from memory their list of desires.

What they can recollect is usually a fraction of what they have written! It is as if they started with a large tree full of leaves, meaning their desires, and during this meditation the tree sheds almost all its leaves, as if the leaves were dried and dead. What it retains glows like golden leaves.

If you can understand which desire is innate and which is borrowed, spiritual growth happens automatically. Whatever is left in the people’s memories, those desires glow like gold. These desires are their true desires. They are the ones that carry the energy for their fulfilment!

If the process is done with awareness, these desires are always selfless desires. They may benefit the individual, no doubt, but they always benefit humanity. Only such selfless desires carry the energy of the universe with them for fulfilment.

When our desires are our own true desires, when they reflect our real needs, when they express themselves in our inner energy, we don’t feel any desperation about trying to achieve them. The realisation comes that, as a matter of natural course of events, these desires will be fulfilled. We are not driven and we are not troubled by them. We accept that they will happen.

Be Blissful!