Desire

What is this feeling bristling inside me?

What is this constant gnawing at my mind?

Who is this unseen, nagging predator corroding my peace?

Who are you?

My name is ‘Desire’. I offer you everything you could wish for.

“When we are not aware of this process, we are dragged through life by our senses and we live outside ourselves.”                                                                                        

              -  Embracing the Beloved, Stephen & Ondrea Levine

Desire is a discontented seductress who will lay you down and have her way with you. Desire never wants what he has. He only wants what he does not have.

Desire’s restlessness gets in the way of what she really wants which is peace. She predisposes us for suffering because we are never contented in the simplicity of the moment. He turns up his nose at the real and authentic in his life because of his obsession with fantasy. We are left hanging, expecting, wishing and pining, always waiting for the next better experience.

The great problem with desire is that when it receives its prize, the moment of relief is so short lived. The much anticipated experience lasts for just a fleeting second and then it is gone.

No amount of sex, food, success or intoxicants can satisfy the ‘Great Desire’

Desire’s obsession is to have the feeling of bliss, something you will never manifest externally. This perfect state is found in the infinite, the unmanifest, not in the physical realm through recognition, material gratification, achievement or praise. The peace that surpasses understanding is the freedom you feel when you let go of wanting.

The irony of the situation is that at the precise moment you receive that which you desire, you experience ecstacy because in that short moment you are no longer desirous. But the feeling is short lived because as soon as you get what you hungered for your desire returns. The nagging sensations resume as you strive yet again for the next fix, goal or craving.

An addiction to ‘desire’ is an illusion which causes you to suffer and robs you of peace. None of these substitutes – not food, sex, success nor intoxicants, can replicate the feeling of wholeness you get when you simply accept life as it is.

If you try and suppress your desires, your lust will rob you of your peace, as you long for what you cannot have. Both desiring and resisting desire will deprive you of happiness.

This week, see if you can discern the areas where you are wanting and let them go. Let go of wanting your youth back, coveting some new toy a friend has acquired, obsessing about the life, body, job you don’t have. See if you can just love the life you have been gifted with.

All my love

Nicolette