"And suddenly you realize: you are in every dot of the universe vanishing and arising.” - Amit Ray

Desire is one of those hopelessly ambiguous things that gets either denounced as the cause of suffering or held to be the ultimate goal. We are either monks or hedonists. Neither is accurate!

Let's take a step back and look at this inevitable and natural function of the human system. Without desire life is impossible. In its essence it is the motivation of life itself. What is the very best way for life to guarantee something happens or you do something? Make you want to. Job done.

This works perfectly when the creature is completely at the behest of nature and natural instincts. But it is a completely different matter when consciousness matures to the point where it is participating in the process; judging it, attempting to control it, wanting it to be different than it is and experiencing cultural biases toward desires that, prior to this would have just be pure innocence.

Culture or society, in its attempt to usurp nature and exercise its own control, has characterized the most natural of human motivations in a dark light. It has done so, so successfully that we are ourselves the enforcer of these rules. The end result being, we have become disconnected with our soul, which is simply a word for your true nature, or what I call Original Innocence.

The other thing that results is that our capacity to discern what is natural and what is culturally imposed gets blurred. We can't tell anymore and so we do evil in the name of good and act in ways that can only be labeled inhuman.

The way back to that Original Innocence and our capacity to discern between natural and unnatural desires starts with a rather simple process. We have to allow both, feel both, experience both and let our capacity to discern the difference mature and grow. But when attempt to do that we find within us a great deal of resistance. All the judgement, criticism and negative characterizations come to the surface. We find it hard to feel these desires. We find it hard to dream our heart's dream. We find ourselves with a great deal of inner discomfort and conflict.

So I offer the simplest advice. Simple to hear but not so simple to do. Give desire equal time and feel both the desire and the resistance to it. When you do something strange happens. The conditioned nervous system, being a totally adaptive mechanism, once it recognizes that the desire can no longer be suppressed will begin to adapt to the new environment. It will, in fact, begin to reconcile the the dissonance. It will look for balance.

The more time you give desire, without trying to force it, the more that environment is transformed. Remember, you can't assume that every desire that arises is natural to you. So you have to let all of it be sorted out. Eventually, you will begin to discern between the unnatural or egoic, programmed desires and the ones that are as natural to you as breathing.

Those desires may come to pass at that point. They may not but that is not the reward. The reward for perseverance here is the end of inner conflict. And the other name for that is peace. Inner Peace is the reward.


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