Desire is a Dynamic Energy🔗

Fear and desire are the fundamental energies that drive our lives. We act either out of a desire to achieve something or reach somewhere, 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 behavior.

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 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 (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, their desires, and during this meditation the tree sheds almost all its leaves, as if the leaves were dried and dead. What leaves the tree retains glow like golden leaves. If you can understand which desire is innate and which is accumulated, spiritual growth happens automatically. 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.

When you have a headache, you are not comfortable with that state - because you know that it is not your true nature. Your true nature is having no headache. In the same way, when you have some desire, you immediately want to come out of it - because deep fulfillment is your very nature and desire causes an imbalance in that fulfillment.

Two important truths you need to understand:

1. Your whole life is a long chain of events performed towards the one goal that is fulfillment. Whatever you may do, whether it is eating or drinking or having relationships, wealth or joy, it is all to experience fulfillment. In different directions you seek fulfillment instead of seeking it directly.

2. Fulfillment is within you, it is your very nature. That is why you are trying to come out of non-fulfillment. The fact that you are searching for fulfillment means that fulfillment is known to you. Otherwise you would not search for it! In the instances in your life when you have felt some fulfillment, there is also a hope that you will experience it again. That is why you extend your life.

The desire that is pure and not directed towards any particular object or person is simply an overflowing energy that is called iccha shakti or the ‘desire energy’. From the navel, energy comes as pure energy. In the heart region, this energy gets converted to the power of desire. This further gets converted into words in the throat region. When this energy gets converted into words, it is called oak or the ‘speech energy’. To give an analogy, the energy that comes from the navel is like loose cotton. The cotton becomes thread in the throat region. Or you can imagine it this way: the energy that comes from the navel is like molten iron. The throat is like a forge where the product is formed! Anyhow, the speech energy moves further to the brain. There it stays as knowledge or gets converted into a command. In the brain, the energy could stay as the power of knowledge or gnana shakti. For example, the desire energy related to the body can become knowledge of the body. The other option is, the words get converted to a command and get executed as well. The command goes to the entire body and moves you. This is called the power of action or kriya shakti. For example, the desire energy related to your body can express as the power of action like moving your body. Pure iccha shakti or desire energy which comes from your being gets converted in the throat region to gnana shakti - power of knowledge and kriya shakti - power of action. If the energy is not processed and channeled properly, the knowledge and action become disconnected from the power of the pure desire energy. The knowledge and action should be in tune with the desire energy. Then it forms a virtuous circle of desire leading to better knowledge and action, which in turn leads to clearer desires! Let us say you have a desire to make a million dollars. If it gets converted properly as knowledge, you will have a clear plan and do the right actions to become a millionaire. If the desire energy gets converted as too much knowledge and less action, then you will end up only thinking more and more, building castles in the air. On the other hand, if the desire energy gets converted as too much action and less knowledge, then you will end up working blindly. For example, you may work really hard like driving a truck from Los Angeles to New York, but can you become a millionaire this way? There is action but not the right knowledge. So the proper conversion of the desire to knowledge and action has to happen. The reason why this conversion doesn't happen properly is lack of awareness. When you are honest and integrated with the desire, there is no conflict and the conversion happens properly.

You might have even experienced some incidents like this in your life. A girl who is afraid to cross a busy street, if she sees her child run across the road will just jump onto the road to save the child without a thought about her own safety. We should understand how she has lost her fear all of a sudden. The reason is that the love for her child has awakened the dimension of motherliness in her. It is the same thing with every relationship of love. If the feeling of love blossoms in somebody, immediately all the fear will leave the person's inner space. Understand, love has tremendous power and so does lust. If you have a lot of energy in your muladhara chakra, it will override the other chakras immediately. There will not be any fear in your swadhishthana chakra,, and there will not be any worries in your manipuraka chakra. These higher chakras will not work when the muladhara chakra has the full power. Without the person's knowledge, it will unleash the latent unknown potential in him. It will spread his potential to the outer world too. If you have a son or daughter, then the dimension of motherliness will be awakened in you. If your mind is ready to receive the experience of different dimensions, those dimensions will blossom in you. If you are completely open-minded, every person you meet in your life will cause you to blossom further. But if you are egoistic, even your spouse or your lover cannot cause you to blossom. Please understand, you have a great responsibility to create an open and non- egoistic mind before entering into a relationship such as between husband and wife or between lovers. Then the very feeling will transform you eternally. If this eternal transformation does not happen, you miss a major dimension of your life. Why are we not able to feel true love? It is because of our samskaras, our emotional attachment to the past memories. Your inner space is filled with too many things related to the past. So your inner space is not available to the present moment. You can only love or feel connected to the people or objects falling in tune with the past memories you loved. If you can drop the emotional attachments to the past, suddenly you will see you have so much of inner space available to you. You can then directl open up to anybody who is in front of you w1t hout asking for his or her past.

Lust is a primal emotion provided by nature for continuation of the species. To go beyond lust is the first major step in realizing the ultimate potential of human life. Humans are forever confused between love and lust. They think only animals are lustful. Actually, only animals are capable of pure lust when they mate! Humans, with their rationalization, can neither be lustful nor loving. That is why they feel dissatisfied and unfulfilled. Sex is carbon, love is diamond. Sex is mud and love is the lotus that blooms in the mud. It is the same substance — the only thing is, you should know how to process it. Just drop your expectations, and you will find a tremendous upsurge of energy.

Today, we know biologically that no man is 100% man, and no woman is 100% woman. A man may be 51% man and 49% woman. Likewise, a woman may be 51% woman, and 49% man; just a difference of 1%, may be more. You have taken birth from the energies of your father and mother. Then, how can you be only male or only female? Whether we accept it or not, we are an embodiment of both male and female energies. We are whole, not divided. Right from the moment of birth, society labels you as either male or female. And it expects you to start behaving accordingly. Inherent human nature is fulfillment. She starts looking to the outside world for a substitute for her own lost half. The male child starts searching for a female presence, and the female child for a male presence. This is where the whole idea of sex starts. The search starts with the idea of how our ‘would-be’ should be.

A small story: One 90-year old man used to sit every day at the beach from morning to evening, watching people going by. Another man who noticed this went up to him and asked him, "What do you actually do sitting here everyday? "The old man replied, "I am searching for a woman to be my wife." The man was simply shocked at this reply and asked him, "Why did you not search in your youth? "The old man replied, "I have been searching since I was 30 years old." The man was astonished and asked him, "What sort of a woman are you searching for?"He replied, "I am searching for a prefect woman." "The man asked, "You havent found one yet?" "I found one woman who matched what I had in mind but it didn"t work out well with her replied the old man. The man asked why. The old man replied, "She was searching for a perfect man!"

This is what happens when we try to get a perfect match for the image that we carry inside us. But after a long search, we suddenly find a person who seems to match our mental image — from a distance. What happens at this point is what is called falling in love'. This is the science behind falling in love. Note that it is always ‘falling’ in love, never ‘rising’ in love! Because of our own strong needs and expectations, we see things as we want to see them. As long as this distance is maintained, things go on smoothly. We continue to project our imagination upon each other. But, as the person slowly comes closer we find that fantasy and reality are totally different. We need to understand that no living person can live up to the image we carry in our minds simply because the image is not built from reality! No image can be matched with reality, because at the end of the day, it is only an image, a fantasy!

What is alchemy? The process of changing a lower level metal such as copper or iron into gold is alchemy. In the same way, when our being is ripe the base feeling of lust transforms to love, the highest emotion we are capable of. In the same way, remove the impurity of your fantasies, add the purity of

friendliness in your relationship and process this with your patience. In the beginning, people may not be able to understand the change in you. Just continue with belief and confidence in yourself. Your sincerity and strength has no way but to touch others around you positively. Add friendliness to love. As of now, our lust is deep-rooted violence to possess the other person. Add friendliness to the relationship. Welcome the partner as he or she is; do not just accept him or her. Welcome and accept the mind, body and being as it is. Then you can see lust turns to love and your being is in eternal bliss. Love adds life even to the person. With love the person is a spirit, life! Without love the person is reduced to a thing, utility! Without love, when you look at a beautiful man or woman and plan for what you can get out of that person, you reduce him or her to a thing. Only when you look at that person with love, the person is a spirit, a living being. Celibacy is nothing but not craving for the suppressed half that is inside you, that's all. If you are a male, you need to experience such fulfillment unto yourself that you no longer miss the suppressed half or female inside you. If you are a female, you are so enough unto yourself that you don't look outside to experience this fulfillment. When you achieve this fulfillment, whether you are married or not, there will be peace in your mind. It is then that you can be celibate even in married life! This is true celibacy.

Total duration: 30 minutes

This meditation technique will bring out all the suppressed emotions in you. Breathing is very closely related to the mind. If your thinking is calm, your breath will be relaxed. If your thinking is aggressive, your breathing will also be aggressive. You may practice this technique on an empty stomach, preferably in the morning. 21 days of Dukkhaharana will transform your being and bring a glow to your face and body.

Stand with your eyes closed. In the first part of this meditation, your mental system is made fully alive by deep breathing. This energy will melt all the repressed emotions like melting ice.

Breathe deeply and chaotically from the depths of your body, always through your nose with your mouth closed. Move your hands, flex your knees, lower yourself and then rise up. Move as if you are a bird in flight, up and down, knees moving up and down, arms moving up and down, in line with your breathing. Do the movements gently and synchronize your inhalation with upward movement and exhalation with downward movement.

Keep your eyes closed and tense each part of your body, part by part, limb by limb, then let it relax. Tense and relax one limb and then move to the next. Start with your feet; then move to legs; then move to thighs; next to the hips; then to stomach and lower back; then to chest and upper back; then to your arms from finger tips to shoulder; next to the neck and shoulders; next to your face, and finally to the top of the head. Relax each part of your entire body before you move to the next part. At the end of these ten minutes, you will become vacant inside; you will become cool, calm and composed.

Sit down keeping your eyes closed and chant the hoo' kara sound, just the word 'hoo'. There is no need to chant it deeply and loudly. Just chant it in a relaxed manner. As you chant, simply witness whatever happens inside or outside your being. The first two parts of this technique are actually a preparation for the third part that is the actual meditation. When you come to the third part, you will see that the mind becomes silent effortlessly, by itself. Silence cannot be forced upon you; it can only happen by itself. Remain in this relaxed state with a smiling face and blissful mood. During this time, there may be many experiences. Just watch them as you would watch the television. Watch your mind thought by thought.