Desire Is Not a Problem, April 06, 2010

David: See, what you’re getting at is the most primal need in every human being is to taste the transcendent. That’s what’s driving everything in every human being, only I think we agree on this point, people don’t realize it.

Participant 1: They don’t know.

David: It would be too shocking for them to realize that, that they’re actually after their own transcendental being in everything they do, in everything they desire. So, desire is not a problem. Desire has been construed to be the problem with spiritual traditions. They say greed is in the way, and lust is in the way. Attachment to inaction or sloth is in the way. But, they haven’t understood either because those things are not in the way. Those things too are in their own way reaching toward that unnamable condition.

See, the theory behind desire is that the human mind and emotional system get trapped in the objects of desire. So, all of your energy, which should be going toward God, this theory postulates, is actually going toward discreet objects that are right across from you and preventing your ascent. That’s the theory in a nutshell and that what you have to do as a spiritual seeker is to redirect that energy so it goes up toward God, and you stop being the bad, bad boy or girl that you are, the bad little evil sinner that you are, and you know you are because you just keep on enjoying those objects. You know they’re bad for you.

But, that theory assumes something that’s untenable from my point of view, which is that desire actually has the sufficient energy to obfuscate the clarity of Consciousness, that’s an assumption in that theory. Obviously, it’s built right into it. It’s right there as a deep precondition, that desire itself is sufficiently empowered to shut down the totality of your Consciousness, which simply cannot be the case because that’s like saying that your body, your physical body itself is an obstacle to realization. It’s tantamount to saying that.

Not only does it assume that desire has that power, but then that you have the sudden and autonomous capability to redirect that with the use of your will. But, that’s another asinine assumption because all of this takes for granted the real reality of the separate ego. It presumes that whole transformation that they claim is possible, to be rooted in a separate ego noticing and then fixing things, when instead the real path is to let desire continue and to simply follow it where it goes, not follow it literally as in sleep with everyone you want to see. That’s another literalistic misinterpretation of what I’m trying to get at.

A desire is a wave in Consciousness. You try to obstruct that wave, you’re going to become very angry. Blocked desire is what causes anger. Trying to fix desire is just a form of blocking it. Trying to redirect it upwards is just another form of blocking it, interfering with it, to speak nothing about not trusting your existence. We haven’t even gone there yet about the basic mistrust you have about your entire person and constitution of being, to even have that kind of relationship with yourself to begin with, to believe that your ability to relate and feel desire for objects and to be in that field of causality is somehow unnatural to you.

There’s a whole different way to see this, and that whole different way can be summarized in the term yogic understanding, a different kind of understanding that is based on the ability of the mind to instantly see into itself and thereby gain its understandings directly, not through teachings, not through authorities who are telling you these kind of insane things and turning you against yourself. Someone who really knew what reality was would never say, “Don’t do this. Don’t do that.” You would have to find out what to do and what not to do. You would have to find out. Yes, I understand it’s putting a big burden on you right from the beginning, but once you wake up in that your process will be like a thunderstorm flashing lightening on a dark black evening. It will be sudden and total, radical and unthinkable.