Desire is an awesome, powerful, element of life. Obviously, it’s the desire to live that gives rise to all other desires, including the very basic desires of the human organism – the desire to be fed and to be sheltered, the desire to procreate and to feel secure. All creatures share these basic desires, and there’s nothing wrong with that, it is completely natural.
After the basic creature desires are satisfied, desire gets more subtle. There is the desire for knowledge, and the desire for power, and these types of desires get fed and are satisfied by the activity of the mind.
There is a point, however, when somehow, mysteriously, in a certain blessed lifetime there arises the desire for enlightenment, for truth, for true self-knowledge. Then of course there are many attempts to feed that desire in the normal way in which other desires have been fed, either through the acquisition of some object or by imagining how and when the desire might be fulfilled.
Eventually you realize that no matter how much you try, no matter how much you figure, no matter how much you think you “get” what has been spoken or written on the subject, whatever you try to do you cannot find this that is called God or Truth or true Self because all desire is a projection into the future. The truth of yourself can only be discovered here in this moment. It is not an object that can be acquired. This is where you begin to realize that this desire is of an entirely different order. Any thing gross or subtle, even the most subtle, exquisite thing, will not satisfy it.
By “thing,” I mean anything that has a beginning, a middle, and an end, because anything that appears is then subject to disappearance. This includes states of mind, thoughts, emotions, insights, experiences, sensations, conclusions and so on.
The very fact that this desire for truth, for true freedom, will not be satisfied by anything in the future is what most people avoid, because it is so radical, because it means that truth, enlightenment, or God is not just a toy of your mind. It is not just a thing to enrich your life, or your sense of yourself, or to feed your high feelings and keep your low feelings at bay. In the facing of this, a kind of disillusionment can occur, and this disillusionment is essential. You realize that no matter what you try to do, you cannot get It. And if It appears to you, you cannot capture It, you cannot keep It.
My invitation is to actually turn the mind back into that desire rather than project it into the future by imagining how it will be satisfied. I invite you to actually burn in the desire.
The same is true with the desire for food or sex or power. If what you really desire is the totality of yourself, it is very useful, at least once when one of these impulses arise and maybe only once is necessary, to not allow the mind to go into any activity of how that might be satisfied. You can actually choose to turn your mind back into the central energy of that desire so that an experience can occur, so that you can see what has been unconsciously leading or directing your life, and in that moment you can recognize that you have a choice.
Courtesy gangaji.org. The 76th birth anniversary of Gangaji will be observed on June 11
Gangaji (Merle Antoinette Roberson)
