A recontextualization of Desire

[electroBeam]

I discovered this insight a while ago and have been using it since. Ever since using this insight, my behavior has changed dramatically, and my approach to life has been radically different.

The bottom line is, the traditional way of looking at desire is wrong. We've misunderstood what desire actually is. Even the buddha.

The traditional way being, we want something, and so we must manifest it to quench our desire. If we want a million dollars, then we must manifest a million dollars to quench that desire.

After we go through personal development, we sort of realize that we are on a hedonic treadmill, and so we become less materialistic and desire less things. Yet even in this state, we still desire stuff. We still desire relationships, keeping our identity, etc.

And so I'd argue that we haven't really nailed this desire thing on the head.

I'd like to introduce a new framing or way of looking at what desire is.

Consider the possibility that desire is not quenched once you manifest the thing the desire is pointing to. Consider the possibility that desire is a signal from God saying you're not doing the right things right now. And when you start doing the right things, you then quench your desire.

I.E. desire is not quenched in the future, its not quenched after manifestation, its quenched from doing the right stuff now.

Whether a desire is quenched, and the extent to which the desire is quenched, is based on how well you align what you're doing with what God wants you to do. In other words, how well you get the choreography of the cosmic play down pat.

The better you get that choreography right, the more quenched the desire is.

And also consider the possibility that the suffering you feel when you notice that your desire is not manifested right now, that suffering has nothing to do with the desire not being manifested right now, its a slap from God saying "silly! Remember how this desire has nothing to do with the result, but with the choreography???"

Every time you feel suffering from a desire, you can remind yourself that thats because you have again confused the signal from the desire as to meaning its about manifesting something when its actually about refocusing your effort on getting the choreography done perfectly right now.

So when you want a million dollars, reframe the desire by asking "what do I feel like doing to get that million of dollars" then contemplate and visualize your way into determining the thing that makes you the most happy. Then DO IT! If you start to feel suffering again, then repeat the steps and find and pick something that feels even better. I guarantee you that the need for the thing to actually be manifested will drop away, just like how the need to have sex drops away after a male orgasm.

When you want a hot chick, reframe the desire by asking "what do I feel like doing to get that chick?" then again contemplate and visualize your way into determining the thing that will make you the most happy. Then DO IT!!!

The cool thing is, its completely result independent, it doesn't matter if the woman rejects you or if you look stupid trying to pick her up, because your satisfaction doesn't come from getting her, it comes from doing the pickup perfectly, aligning how you do the pickup exactly with how God wants you to do the pickup. Like you got the choreography of the cosmic play down pat perfectly. The entire pickup stack will flow like a divine dance. And after the pickup run, you'll feel so satisfied just from doing it the way God wanted you to, that the desire to text her or call her wont even cross your mind. Maybe you're horny as fuck and so you will, but again, you'll be 100% satisfied from the doing then the result.

[Leo Gura]

If you desire a lobster and you desire to catch and cook the lobster but you never get to eat the lobster methinks you will not be pleased, since the whole function of that desire was to fill your belly with lobster.

Desire is there to get you to meet your survival needs.

[electroBeam]

Methinks if you experimented with what hunger actually is, you might find its resistance to doing the work needed to get full, rather than the lack of fullness itself.

If you're walking to the shops to buy food, there aint suffering right in the midst of the pure doing the walking to the shops. Theres only suffering when you stop doing what will make you full(shop being closed). 

So instead of viewing desire as something that has to be quenched, you can view it as a signal or reminder to maximize whatever it takes to get into that pure doing state. Then its fully quenched until that changes.

Sometimes the doing feels so good that the result aint worth it in the end. Sometimes what you desired, wasnt the lobster but the jog to the shops, sometimes what you desired is the growth from the doing, rather then the result from the doing. Sometimes you'll discover that thinking a desire will only be quenched once you manifest it causes suffering and a whole load of problems like fear you'll never manifest it, getting upset when results dont go your way, toxic pickup mentality, toxic work culture, etc whereas if you reframed it to realizing the doing = the quenching and satisfaction itself, those myrad of problems dissolve.

[Leo Gura]

5 minutes ago, electroBeam said:

Methinks if you experimented with what hunger actually is, you might find its resistance to doing the work needed to get full, rather than the lack of fullness itself.

If you're walking to the shops to buy food, there aint suffering right in the midst of the pure doing the walking to the shops. Theres only suffering when you stop doing what will make you full(shop being closed). 

Sounds nice in theory but it just isn't true.

You hunger will not go away from doing the work, but when your belly is filled.

Sure, you will feel better about yourself if you stop procrastinating and start taking action towards solving your desire. But that doesn't satisfy the desire itself. At least not in the basic cases of hunger, sex, etc. Maybe in some very high level cases that could work.

But a desire for sex will not be satisfied by anything other than sex. Or simply by letting the desire go entirely. But it will come back! You can't let go of sex so easily.

[BornToBoil]

@Leo Gura @Leo Gura but do you have to please your desires all the time? Don't people grow by learning to transcend them? 

What about your video on the root cause of all addictions and you loosing a lot of weight by sitting and feeling the urge to eat icecream, but not acting on it?

Edited February 10, 2021 by BornToBoil

[mandyjw]

When you specify and allow a desire you instantly feel better. Pure desire is like an inspiration that comes to an artist. However, we often associate desire with the suffering of noticing that we don't have what we want yet. So we have split ourselves and created a tension. If you try not to feel this tension by pretending it's not there, you won't do the work to specify your desires. After you specify a desire the work is in dropping the tension, the belief that it's not there yet. Everything we want is because we think we'll feel better in the having of it. That's the essence of desire. So when you align with feeling better and understand the root of all desire, you can get more specific about desires, if you want. It becomes creation, like inspiration to the artist rather than survival. Creative mode, not survival mode. 

[electroBeam]

8 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Sounds nice in theory but it just isn't true.

You hunger will not go away from doing the work, but when your belly is filled.

Sure, you will feel better about yourself if you stop procrastinating and start taking action towards solving your desire. But that doesn't satisfy the desire itself. At least not in the basic cases of hunger, sex, etc. Maybe in some very high level cases that could work.

But a desire for sex will not be satisfied by anything other than sex. Or simply by letting the desire go entirely. But it will come back! You can't let go of sex so easily.

Visualizing your desire getting satisfied plus doing it resolves the problem more effectively.

12 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Maybe in some very high level cases that could work.

That was more the context of the original post.

Low level desires like sex get fulfilled entirely after the act is done. High level desires like getting lots of money doesnt necessarily do this. Sometimes after achieving it you get depressed. This is more the context that was being aimed at. I consider intimacy(not sex) a high level desire. The example in the OP was a desire for intimacy.

[Nahm]

@electroBeam

“I was the current and the flow, the streaming and the waves, I arose and crashed as tides and fell as rain, and I was glorious.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                - Water

?

[Leo Gura]

21 minutes ago, BornToBoil said:

@Leo Gura @Leo Gura but do you have to please your desires all the time? Don't people grow by learning to transcend them? 

What about your video on the root cause of all addictions and you loosing a lot of weight by sitting and feeling the urge to eat icecream, but not acting on it?

Best way I have found to transcend desires is to deeply satisfy them.

Yes, you can of course abstain from cravings and desires. But that rarely extinguishes them. They tend to come back.

[BornToBoil]

@Leo Gura how do you deeply satisfy a desire?

[Bando]

You just do it

[BornToBoil]

@Bando I just do a lot of things, sometimes very excessively, and it doesn't seem to be working...

[Juliano Zn]

28 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Best way I have found to transcend desires is to deeply satisfy them.

Yes, you can of course abstain from cravings and desires. But that rarely extinguishes them. They tend to come back.

A year ago I sold my video game. But I still feel the strong desire to play sometimes. If I try to deeply satisfy this desire, wouldn't I be playing new games for the rest of my life and still not deeply satisfy the desire? On the other hand, If I don't try to satisfy the desire it will always come back, as you said.

Maybe I will mature and naturally let go of it, without having to force it. Maybe it's just a matter of balance. 

[Virtually]

@Leo Gura I think the op is appropriate for most people here.

Most of the fear related to the desire for sex goes away when you start to engage in the processes and activities that will lead to sex. desire feels bad especially when pain/fear is sourcing it: when you know you'll get sex and are free from the fear and uncertainty, the desire for sex takes on a different form.
So it's more about the fear involved related to not having sex and having the expectations that one might not get it in the future, rather than the desire itself.

Sure it moves you to satisfy your survival needs, but it can also make you feel alive when it is free from fear. Knowing you're are capable of embodying the principles that move you in the right direction is not just matter of procrastination, but it's closely related to flow states and cognitive fluency, as well, which in themselves are pleasurable and enriching.

Deeply satisfying desire is the best solution as you say, but what's even better is knowing you have the skills to satisfy them if you want, and get that thing back if you lose it. At least, I feel that brings so much more confidence and calm to my life, and allows me to enjoy satisfying my desires without visualizing some negative scenario of me losing something. Why do that when you know you can get it back?

 

I'll take advantage of the situation to say that I especially enjoyed your last video on the blog, it was packed with a lot of valuable information. During the video I found myself thinking "oh, I've never thought about it in this way" or many many times, and I suppose that's precisely because the video was unscripted. In your random talk is implicity present the particular perspective you have on different aspects of life. And that way it's simply easier to get a communication or internalize anothers' perspective, because you have very little time to think and so you're forced to compress what you think about something, and that works very well if you have a lot to say. Being on the receiving end of the communication I was able to make lots of distinctions in your perspective and immediately reflect on mine, by seeing how  you compress your raw thoughts - like I could immediately pick up on your implicit pattern processing. And that made a huge difference.

It would be good to have extended periods of time where you only post unscripted videos (maybe on youtube?) and I believe a lot of people would benefit from your raw personal reflections. I sure did. All the better if it's to work on the book.

Thanks for your work.

Edited February 10, 2021 by Virtually

[Leo Gura]

5 hours ago, BornToBoil said:

@Leo Gura how do you deeply satisfy a desire?

It's tricky to say. I don't know exactly. Some people get stuck chasing the same desire endlessly forever.

I think it probably involves experiencing enough of it that you get sick of it and are ready to move on to higher things. It also requires exploration of higher joys.

I feel like I have almost extinguished my desire for junk food. It used to be so hard to say no, now it is almost effortless. And I had a lot of junk food in the past, but it caused me so much suffering I don't want it any more.

Lower desires tend to bring a lot of suffering which you can use against them. But it requires going through that suffering. Play so much video games that you are disgusted with yourself.

It certainly helps a lot when you discover higher spiritual dimensions to life. You can use spiritual joy to replace the seeking of base cravings and raw pleasure.

Sex is still a desire I have not figured out. It's so powerful and intoxicating. I see few spiritual masters have conquered it even in their 60s.

[BipolarGrowth]

You never escape desire while in an embodied form and maybe even never escape it beyond that. You merely change from one desire to another. My solution to tackling lower desires that might be detrimental to you is to taste the elegance of the highest experience or realization. Then you will naturally focus on that, and your life will have more net positivity than negativity. Of course the highest experience isn’t some heroin high. It’s God. Experience God, and you will want to experience more. This will slowly reduce your desires for everything else. I can’t even give a shit about playing video games when I literally used almost every free moment of my teenage years playing games. Making money doesn’t interest me nearly as much. The same can be said for sex and everything else. They have all become secondary or even lower on the priority list. 

[Gesundheit]

?

[electroBeam]

7 hours ago, Nahm said:

@electroBeam

“I was the current and the flow, the streaming and the waves, I arose and crashed as tides and fell as rain, and I was glorious.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                - Water

?

hello water, how are you.

Do you mean let go of trying to get the desire and just feel into/dive into/fully immerse into the desire and just BE the desire?

[JosephKnecht]

The problem of desires is that in the moment of fulfillment of desire, the desire itself is re-contextualized.

For example... You desire money. You get money. You no longer desire money. Now you desire not to lose the money. The initial desire for money is re-contextualized as a desire for security. Money was just a proxy for security.

You will continue to have desires until you have re-contextualized all desires. 

 

[Breakingthewall]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Sex is still a desire I have not figured out. It's so powerful and intoxicating. I see few spiritual masters have conquered it even in their 60s.

Sex is a very difficult desire to forget, it is always there to remind you that you cannot completely transcend. Whether you satisfy it or not, it's always going to show up. It is the great temptation, the one that attaches you to the ego. on the one hand I would like to transcend it but on the other, not really.