The insatiability of desires

Spiritual inspiration Sunday 12

I have a riddle for you:
If a wildfire burns towards you faster than you can run, how can you come out of alive?
I tell you the answer after the video.

Each Sunday we see a few minutes of wise words here, but I am well aware how this goes: The words appeal to our higher self and we open heartedly agree, only to have forgotten about them half a day later.

So despite the fact that those videos don’t need any explanation or can’t be improved upon, I write some introductions in order to make it a bit more relatable for common folks like us, simply to serve as an intermediate “translator” to make those wisdoms more relatable.

I simply tell you how long it takes me to shed one layer of desire after the other within my meditation project – all in the form of initial sacrifices without gains:

1. sacrifice: I decided to meditate daily (nerve wrecking, but a good sacrifice of fun-time for a higher purpose)
2. My ageing pushed it on me in ever increasing reminders that I should give up my desire to still be young and attractive.
3. However, I still was hoping for to at least at one point become wealthy in order to get what I was aspiring for in my youth, but I realised that this is a never endling story – even Rockefeller as he was asked when he finally would be financially satisfied said “just a little bit more” – so I realised that greed is never ending.
4. I also understood that the concept of enjoying life to the fullest does cause more suffering then pain, because fully expressing oneself without moral inhibitions will harm others and therewith impair their ability to express themselves. And like greed this also is insatiable.
5. In the same way I realised that sexual desires never end, because we feel compelled have certain sexual experiences with certain sexual (arche)types but in times of desire forget that we already had this or that kind of experience or type of a person, so it is only our sexual drive tricking us into believing that we still have to undergo specific experiences. And let’s face it: sex is not essential to life as is eating or drinking. Only because the drive is strong does not mean that it is essential.
6. I then held onto the concept of still being important by providing some unique value to it, (by healing people or rescuing the world from its self destruction,) but then realised that the misery of us humans are mere karmic results of our own doing, so first and foremost I should rescue and heal my own spirit, mind and body. Only then I might reconsider becoming more active again.
   Actually: Whilst pondering about that it dawned upon me that if I would have had the power to save the world when I was young I could have caused a lot of disastrous turmoil by my ignorance and blinkered approach.
   And who knows:Maybe I do a lot of good by cleaning out all my hidden demonic trades before they had the chance to even manifest?
7. And every once in a while I got the urge to “treat myself well” – but more and more I notice that each of those fulfilments of wishes usually only lasts a few months and then is used up, rendering the object of desire old.
   So because each purchase endangers me to hoard, plus it essentially is damaging to the environment, I more and more refrain from buying things and “if in doubt, I cut them out”.

And now to the rewards after all of those sacrifices:

In the short run each sacrifice is a loss, but in the long run makes me stronger and gives me a radiance of walking the walk and not only talking the talk. There is some kind or aura people with integrity have – just think of the charisma spiritual leaders or social justice fighters had.

A simple life is something I also admired in lone fighters. The less I need the more mobile and flexible to travel I am also.

Not running after sex whenever the opportunity arises (merely “to better my statistics”) also helps me in not running into random troubles, because more and more I learn to see whether a person is compatible with me.

And now comes the answer to my riddle at the beginning:
If a wildfire burns in your direction in full speed the best you can do is to set a second fire in the direction the wind is blowing to, so that some ground will be covered before the wildfire reaches you.

Choosing to refrain from desires yourself is like anticipating what life would take from you anyway – but before it was forced upon you.
By having chosen that reality out of free will makes one emanate dignity.
If the same things are taken from a person against their will, it will result in a nervous wreck.

One word of caution though:
Especially when we change course; initially our sacrifices often make us stern and serious, so, especially in the beginning, don’t impose your new ways on others, because else it can turn into guilt and then backfire big time:

For me, the longest struggles to cut out some habit, desire or to undergo a change were usually the upholder of moral standards who got so much on my nerves that my rebellious ego stubbornly did resist a change for decades.

So just do for yourself what makes sense – even if others destroy the world we all live in – to push change onto them hardly ever makes a difference.