Desire

Understanding and coping with our desires is what spirituality is all about. Many believe that unless you are passionate about what you are doing, you don't live up to your potential. This might be true, but don't forget that the spiritual traveler will eventually transcend all desires. Similarly, if you numb your existing desires just because a guru or a book tells you to, you probably will miss out on life as well. So how can we steer through this confusing jungle? Only one person in the world that can guide you through it, and that is you and your inner voice.

I think there are three kind of desires, those you should pursue to burn them off eventually, those that you need to suppress to reach a different goal, and your false desires, i.e. those that you can put aside like old worn clothes, but you don't know it yet.

The desires that you need to deal with in your life is what the famous passion test is all about. For some it is power, some accumulating wealth, and for most of us it's sex. Some need to write spiritual books to be happy, and some have to build hospitals in Africa. Whatever you do to be fulfilled, you are doing it for your own spiritual evolution. God could build His own schools and hospitals, if He wanted to, Sri Ramakrishna used to say. You are probably more evolved spiritually if you build schools rather than an empire, but you do it for your own good nevertheless. Eventually, you grow out of your desire. I bet you Alexander the Great was done with the power game after he had conquered the world. I also bet you that Henry Miller was done with the sex thing when he reached 60.

Then there are the desires that we suppress to get something else. Take marriage for example. We take a vow that we will only have one sexual partner for the rest of the life. The desire to have sex with others doesn't go away, so we cannot help but to channel this energy and frustration into a different area. Suppressing desires is a little like building a dam. Artificially created, you see a beautiful calm lake. But water is running at an incredible speed into a turbine, powering different things. Some claim you have to suppress your sexual urges to better achieve the highest spiritual experience, samadhi. I don't know whether this is true, but you certainly can experiment with the concept.

Then there are artificial desires. That are those that are projected by the ego, but if you manage to look through them, you actually find that you are better off without them. I have made a small discovery in this direction at work. I try to resist the temptation to steer every conversation into my direction. Instead, I let life set the agenda for me, without sacrificing my ideas. You find that you are better off that way. If you put yourself deliberately behind, a force puts you in front. It works like magic.

So live your right desires to the fullest until you can honestly say, been there, done that. Suppress some desires to mold the life you want to live, and overcome the ego to find your hidden true intentions. The problem of course is which desire is which, but that's what your life's journey and your spiritual path is all about.

Vasana

vasana: tendency or desire

Whether you believe in reincarnation or not, you will probably agree that people tend to be endowed with very different character traits, likes and dislikes. If you have children you will observe that from early days they come attached with completely different personality traits. I admit, it's kind of obvious, but for me this idea that we all have to live with our individual vasana has hit me only recently. We have to develop these vasanas and live them out in most cases, and have to suppress them in some cases, just as we choose.

I started thinking about this theme when I read Neale Walsch's Conversations with God. In it, God explained the process of spiritual self-discovery with the colors of the rainbow. As the intersection of the basic colors give you the color white, you have to literally live through and express all rainbow colors, i.e. everything God is not, in order to discover Him. Just imagine what this implies, you pretty much have to throw all moral standards out of the window. You just don't know what is wrong or right; what you have to ask is whether a particular action is useful for your development or not. Obviously, only your own soul can provide you with this answer.

Consider 3 historic figures, Alexander the Great, Napoleon and Hitler. Only Alexander succeeded with his mission in life to conquer the world. At the end of his short life he had accomplished and seen everything. The world as was known then was pretty much his. I am sure that at the end of his life he was just fed up with the whole conquering business. Napoleon on the other hand tortured himself for the rest of his life in exile. Allegedly his last two words when he died were France ... Grand Army. How sad! Quite frankly, I don't even want to know what went on in Hitler's brain in the hours before he shot himself in the dark bunker. Alexander was done with his rainbow color, Napoleon & Hitler weren't.

Take another example, sex. I re-read Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer for this blog and was surprised to see how boring these sexual episodes were. Already at the age of 40, he apparently was bored to tears with sex. I am pretty sure when he died at the age of 90, he had other things on his mind than sex. This rainbow color was done as well.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you what this all means for you personally. If you conquer the world, sexually exploit others, or aggressively climb the ranks of a corporation you may satisfy your vasana, but you also create bad karma which you have to deal with eventually. Still, if your longing is planted deep in your soul you might not have another choice. Just get it done with once and for all. Go all the way in whatever you do Sadhguru says (Mystic's Musings). Don't judge others and search your soul for your mission in life.