Wanting and Craving

 Crave for a thing, you will get it. Renounce the craving, the object will follow you by itself.

Swami Sivananda

I just read something I wrote in 2017 when I was still very much into desire manifesting.  It sounds so contradictory to what I "believe"?/"know"? now.  It was in 2018 that I began studying Buddhist teachings and gaining a different but much clearer perspective.  

Normal to Want

Yes, I believe as humans we are going to "want" and even "crave" for Life to be wholesome and somewhat easy.  It is so "normal" to want, dream and fantasize about something other than what is when "what is" is full of one difficulty after another. It is so human to "hope" for something better when the moment we are in is full of obvious suffering. That doesn't mean, however, that we should get so attached and so caught up on this "me" getting what it wants that we fail to see the bigger picture.  We need to get to the point where we see that the problem isn't so much in not getting the thing we want...it is in the wanting itself...more specifically,  in our attachment to desire.  

Attached to Desire?

We may manifest that thing on our dream board but for how long is it going to make us happy and is it truly going to fulfill us in the long run?  If we take the time to examine our minds and how they operate, we will see that we do not stay happy very long after we get what we dreamed of. We will soon hear mind telling us to go after or seek to manifest something else, then something else, and something else. Won't we? It is a never ending striving this wanting takes us on, isn't it?  

Already in you

As far as having that thing fulfill us/ make us happy/ solve all our problems etc ...it doesn't. We just think it does.  We are already fulfilled.  We already have all the conditions we need for happiness, even in the midst of so called suffering.  We are just closed to them, that's all, so we cannot feel that flow of peace, joy, compassion, bliss ( sat chit ananda) that is within us already. When we get the thing on our list we open and we experience this wonderful flow of shakti through us.  .....so it is like "Oh my...I got what I always wanted and now I am happy." That is just ego trying to be the hero , taking credit for what isn't its. You were always happy...you just didn't know it because you were so busy looking out there  you failed to recognize what was already in you. You attributed your happiness to a condition of Life.  You attributed your happiness to manifesting a thing because it helped you to open to what was already in you. We need to observe how the attainment of our dreams and desires  fails to keep us open. There is no permanence to any of these things we are attempting to manifest. Relationships, wealth, abundance, success, recognition etc are just outer world conditions that can leave us just as quickly as they can be "manifested" into our lives.  It is like trying to hold on to beech sand. It doesn't sustain our happiness.  It doesn't fulfill us.  It is just a bunch of ceaseless grasping and clinging to things we cannot hold. 

Internal Cause for Both Suffering and Happiness

Our dreaming and fantasizing often increases in times of suffering. When life is challenging and difficult we often want it to be different. We resist what is and dream of or attempt to manifest something better. But just as the things "out there" have nothing to do with our happiness and fulfillment, they also have little or nothing to do with our suffering. The source for both our suffering and our happiness is internal, not external. Once we realize that we stop being so attached to our desires.  We stop attempting to manifest in this way. We find peace with the moment regardless of what is going on in it as we take accountability for our own inner states of being.  Instead of asking "How can I get this or that so I am happy?", we ask: "What do I need to work on inside of me so I open to the happiness that is already there?"  Totally different ball game, let me tell ya. 

Dealing in the  Interphase

There is an interphase we might encounter, however, between this realization that desire is the source of our suffering and our being completely free of its hold. In the podcast linked below, Michael Singer talks about  our tendency to want to suppress "desire" which I believe he sees as renouncing. Once we see how damaging dreaming and wanting  and attempting to manifest can be to our acceptance of the reality of the present moment, we might decide to go to war against it. He sees this as taking part in a tug of war between the higher Self (who we are behind mind)  and the lower self ( our desires and habit mind). The higher Self is beyond desire and knows that all the peace and joy we want is already within us; the lower self is that habit mind that attempts to fulfill the wants and needs of "little me" by manipulating and taking from the outside world.  Once we commit to awakening from little me's dream, we may make it and the mind's habitual tendencies the enemy, and set out to fight those pulls or calls toward desire and the lower self energy. We may resist with great might our habit minds and our human inclination toward wanting. We feel, for example, a desire coming up, say the craving for a cigarette after a month of not smoking. Though it is true that  we should not give into that desire to smoke because every time we give in we reinforce habit, we might erroneously assume that we should tighten our grip on the rope and pull against it. We might attempt to resist, repress or suppress the desire with great force. We might hate it or ourselves for having that desire as we try to squish it down below the surface of conscious awareness like we so often tend to do with energies that are disturbing. This, Singer reminds us, doesn't work.  It just creates more struggle and we will find ourselves  constantly attempting to put out fires, constantly trying to make our dips into negativity less negative,

Don't Resist, Transcend. Relax and Let Go

The only way to deal with desire and our lower energies  is through transcendance and this takes time and practice. Instead of attempting to put out every fire and disturbance of energy craving creates, we should recognize our desire, allow it, be compassionate with it and ourselves as we lean back and loosen our grip on the rope we are holding onto. We don't fight it.  We don't give into it.  We just relax and let go.   It doesn't have to be a battle between desire and us. We do not have to be pulled face down into the mud.  We do not have to resist.. We can simply relax and let go, falling back into that peaceful place of Higher Self. The lower energy will dissolve on its own. 

Anyway, that is what I thought of as I read my entry on the "not wanting cancer" and observed how much I have grown since then in my understanding of both dukkha and sukha. Hope it makes some sense to someone other than me.

All is well.

https://dale-lynwritin.blogspot.com/2017/05/acceptance-vs-giving-up-on-wanting.html

Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe ( Sept 4, 2023) The Yoga of Letting Go-Staying True to Your Higher Clarity.https://tou.org/talks/