Sunday 16 September 2007

Desires

I've been doing a bit of procrastinating reading about motivation, desires etc. Here's something I came across that really struck a cord with me. Maybe you'll find it useful too. I've edited and abridged it a bit, but you can read the complete version here.
When we’ve brought awareness to our desires, we can begin to work with them...take the impulse that longs for pizza and romance and caffeine and new toys and find a way to transmute it so that it fuels your deeper goals...

[Ask] yourself the question, “What do I want by getting what I want?”

You can apply that query to almost any desire, and the results are often surprising. What do I really expect to get from eating that sweet? What do I really want from the dream lover I pine for, or from the recognition I hope to achieve, or from making 100,000 a year?

Your first answer might be ‘intimacy’ or ‘companionship’ or ‘security’. But if you keep asking (“What do I want from intimacy? What do I want from security?”) the answer will almost always be something like happiness, fulfillment, love, or peace of mind.

The desire for happiness is really the bottom line, the underpinning of all desires. Once you realize that, you are, once again, in a position to ask yourself whether it might be possible to feel happy without necessarily getting what you want...

When we’ve learned to identify our deepest desires, the longings of our soul, we can truly take advantage of the creative power of desire. That’s when our intentions, instead of being wishes or fantasies, become powerful engines that awaken our life...

Working with desires

Are you wondering whether a particular desire is healthy or unhealthy? Here’s how you find out.

First, bring the desire fully you’re your conscious awareness. Notice the words associated with the desire. Especially, pay attention to the feeling quality of it. Notice where you feel it in your body. Notice the emotional state it induces. Do you feel excited? Do you feel uncomfortable?

Once you’ve identified what the desire is, and how it feels like to be in a state of desire, ask yourself:
  1. How does this desire fit in with my greater priorities?
  2. Will following this impulse hurt others? Will it hurt me?
  3. Does it take me closer to my higher self, or will it create more barriers between my soul and myself?
  4. Is it beneficial to other people as well as to myself?
  5. What will I have to give up if I follow this desire?
  6. What will I have to give up if I don’t?
  7. What do I really want by getting what I want?
Turning a Desire into an Intention

Once you’ve identified what it is that you really want, articulate it. Even if it is something that feels vague, like “to be happy” you can still put it into the form of an intention. You might say, “My intention is to experience happiness in an intimate relationship.” Or “My intention is to experience happiness no matter what is going on in my life.”

4 comments:

Steph said...

You been reading self help books?? *smack* ;)

yublocka said...

Now now Steph, play nice and humour me dammit! :)

Mary said...

Haha...Steph sounds like some of my good friends taking the piss LOL. Great post hon and definitely food for thought! I've been giving in to too many of my desires lately and mostly food related.

Margaret said...

I quite often think this way about the material items in our house. Over the last 10 years or so our desires have changed. Or maybe not the desire but the intentions that point to the desire.

Example. Initially we wanted to buy our own house. My thoughts were for security - His may have been so that people can see where we live.. Not the purest of intentions and the reason I think we have been held back in many areas.

However, thinking about it like this helps to put the purest intention to the desire and to help weed out those unhelpful ones.

Still will be hard to stop eating the unhealthy food but today I will think about the intention and desire more.

Thanks..

And I love self-help books. Usually they are very heavy and make good door stops LOL..