Recognize your True Desires…

Fear and desire are the fundamental energies that drive our lives. We act either out of 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 of fear.
We have so many desires and many times we feel we don’t have the energy to fulfill them. According to the Jain tradition, the Divine sends us with enough energy and capacity to fulfill 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 fulfill our true desires or needs.

What are our true desires? During the Life Bliss Program Level 2, there is a session wherein 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, they are asked 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 mediation 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 glows like gold. These desires are their true desires. They are the ones that carry the energy for their fulfillment! 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 realization 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!