How to know whether a desire is authentic or inauthentic?

[Vision]

I'm currently 15. Through self-evaluation, I'm mostly at the Achiever/Orange stage of development, so having these drives makes a lot of sense to me. I am not yet financially free (a tenth of the way there), but I am not sure if the prospect of financial freedom by itself is motivating me enough, I have these other material desires also motivating me. But I don't want to waste time pursuing the wrong things.

 

I want luxury cars and a mansion. I know that these things won't make me happy, but I don't really know. I haven't experienced the realization myself. 

 

Pursuing such lofty material goals can take years, so these are my options: 

• Spend many years pursuing these material goals, achieve them, thereby exhausting my desire
• Save myself many years by doing inner work and self-reflection, thereby renouncing the desire 

 

With this also comes the question - how do I know what desires come from my true Self and which desires come from my ego? Do I want these things for the sheer experience of it or because I think it will make me happy? 

[OctagonOctopus]

All desires come from the ego-self, nothing wrong with that, it is just doing its thing. Trying to surive the things that are identified with.

Your real Self is happy regardless of circumstance, real desirelessness is pure bliss. 

Here is the thing about those options, one could be see as trying to push something away & the other could be seen as trying to pull something towards you. I would actually do both at the same time, even though it might seem contradictory, it actaully isn't. By doing this you will begin to see the pushing & pulling you are constantly doing, the whole dynamic, & start to understand it for what it is. 

You can get the ego-self to desire to be in alinement with Being. It is a lot easier to do this when you see the whole dynamic of what the ego-self is doing. 

[Nahm]

You are currently wanting these things because you are believing the goodness of feeling comes from things in and of your experience. Notice you are the source of feeling. Feeling has never ‘come to you’ from anyone, anything, or anywhere. 

Desire is this goodness of feeling. Desire is the gasoline of the creator. What good is a car which is attempting to exhaust it’s gas? This is very conflicting with it’s dream & vision of where it desires to go. What good is a car which renounces the very gas which serves it in creating the life it wants to create? What good is driving a car when you are not looking through windshield, but to the floor boards trying to figure our which gas to use? The car is already cruising. Look where it is going, and indeed it goes there. 

 

[Vision]

@OctagonOctopus Wow, that makes sense! Thanks.

@Nahm Is the very desire itself, feeling? Not what the desire gets me? 

[Nahm]

@Vision

Check and see. 

[Vision]

@Nahm

I'm not sure 

[SamC]

It obviously is authentic if you want it. Don't resist it, let it be. Some part of you wants that thing because it feels like it will get love that way, and that's okey. Notice how repressing that makes you inauthentic.

Investigate and be curious about what that need is. Contemplate about it. See how you can meet that need within you and why you have that need. Give this part of yourself love and healing + meet its need. Is this your inner child/ shadow that is speaking? Get familiar with who this " part " is.

Ego is not bad, only ego makes it so

Edited March 3, 2021 by SamC

[John Paul]

Life has twists and turns. Why not do what feels right in your heart?

[Gesundheit]

Desire is always authentic. It's just not always clear what it is, because it's usually overlayed by layers of thoughts, which are, more often than not, inauthentic. People usually get lost in their made-up webs of meanings and beliefs, and therefore get disconnected from their authentic selves. They look at the finger and forget the moon, when in fact the moon is the only thing that really matters.

To help make better use of the information above, let's take this simple example; Let's say you are feeling hungry right now, and you want an ice-cream cone. Your authentic desire is hunger, not food and certainly not the ice-cream cone. You might say "but it's also true that I love ice-cream or that ice-cream tastes good", but that'd not be quite accurate. The truth is that you love how ice-cream has made you feel time and time again before, and now you want to repeat that experience in order to feel that sensation again. The taste is a subjective judgement, so it's more about you, not the ice-cream itself.

Apply the example above for everything, and you will see clearly how all desire is authentic. If you desire expensive cars, it's only because you desire what you estimate those cars will make possible for you. You may be thinking that a Bugatti will make you look cool in front of your friends and family, so you might think that looking cool is your authentic desire. But that's not true either. If you dig deeper, you will find another layer, and another one, and another one, until you reach to the most fundamental desire; Happiness. Everything everyone does is an expression of lack of happiness, which is what desire is, on the most fundamental level. Most people express that desire rather inauthentically, and therefore, ironically and counter-intuitively, create more suffering instead of less. This usually keeps repeating until one gets fed up and wakes up to their BS and finally starts growing more awareness and more authenticity, and eventually become happy.

Edited March 5, 2021 by Gesundheit