The Truth About Fear And Desire!

We all want to get better at life; not get better at meditation per se. Getting better at life is finding peace and happiness in daily life. What stops us from recognizing this peace is our fears and desires - not the fears/desires of actual survival - but the fears and desires of being incomplete and wanting to complete ourselves by finding what is missing and guarding what is there.
We have gone thru so much life and are still complete and full. What if these fears/desires are just illusory?

Transcript

Let's close our eyes.

You know many people start meditating for some or the other reason.

They are either curious,

They've heard something about meditation,

They want to try it out,

They want to get something out of it.

But most of us who come to meditation don't want to get good at meditation.

We want to get good at life through meditation.

Meditation is not the end goal.

The end goal is to be happy in life and meditation is just a means to an end.

So what happens during the meditation sessions,

Not just these sessions,

Any meditative practice you may have,

What happens there is something changes inside us.

Something opens up,

Some seed is sown that might sprout at some unknown time that will clear things up for us.

In other words,

We get wiser and this wisdom is not mistaken as information.

Wisdom is something innate.

It's like something that you see that cannot be unseen and once you see it,

It starts growing inside of you,

Changing you,

Whether you know it,

Whether you notice it or not.

For example,

Most of us might have,

While growing up,

Believed in Santa Claus and at some point we saw something which we may not remember,

Maybe we do.

We saw something and from that day onwards,

Santa Claus was a good story.

It wasn't true but it was a story for us.

We became wiser.

We understood that Santa Claus doesn't really exist.

Just like that,

Meditation is about getting wiser,

Seeing the truth of our own life,

Of our own suffering,

The mechanism of it and the way out of it and then some mysterious ways you start remembering things exactly when you should about not getting involved and drastically your suffering starts reducing and if we dive a little deeper into what suffering is,

Suffering is a two-fold engulfing that we are subjected to through our upbringing,

Through our society,

Through whatever we are exposed to,

Namely fear and desire and not just any fear and desire.

There are some fears that are needed otherwise nothing stops us from hurting ourselves or hurting others.

The fear of being in front of a tiger,

In those situations fears are needed and those are biological mechanisms instilled in us to survive and those don't really cause suffering in our life.

Then there is desire,

Desiring to eat,

To drink,

To sleep,

To contribute,

To improve,

To work hard,

To celebrate,

To share,

To love,

To create art,

To enjoy art.

All these desires are what I call divine desires.

They are channeled through us.

So the fears and desires that I'm talking about are very specific kinds of fears and specific kinds of desires that somehow at a deeper level are related to how we think of our happiness and peace.

For example,

We are afraid if something happens,

Maybe at work,

Maybe someone might say something,

They might see something,

You might lose someone,

Lose something,

You need to protect something or someone.

That's the fear we've all experienced in different areas of our life,

Different stages of our life.

But if we asked ourselves while experiencing that fear,

What's the real fear about?

Is it about someone,

We losing someone or is there something deeper?

And in that moment,

If we investigate our own fear,

We might see the deeper fear that if I lose someone or if I lose something,

I will be incomplete.

Therefore,

I won't be at peace.

The tail of the fear is the real fear that makes us pursue,

Hold on to things,

Guard them.

Sometimes knowingly we fight to keep those fears because we think that that is the real fear.

Same is true about desire.

We desire more money,

Better living.

And trust me,

I'm not saying we shouldn't live better,

But you understand my drift.

When I say we hold our peace ransom for some desires,

I want this next big thing,

Otherwise I'm incomplete.

I need this problem solved.

All these things should align,

The weather should cooperate,

Etc.

And if in that desire we asked ourselves and we investigated the truth behind our desire,

We might end up finding that in the garb,

In the cloak of this apparent desire,

We believe that our peace is incomplete without this thing.

We are incomplete without this thing that we are desiring.

And we all know what happens when our desires are met.

We feel happy for a split second and off we go on to the next one.

Some people call it the pursuit of happiness,

Where the pursuit of happiness is the goal.

Being happy is never the goal.

And these are the things we are fed as a society so early on that we don't really question,

We don't really investigate.

And as adults,

This suffering,

This mental suffering,

And by suffering I mean anger,

Disappointment,

Fear,

Sadness,

Unhappiness,

Depression in sometimes,

In someone,

These things are pointing us that something is wrong,

Otherwise we wouldn't be feeling those things.

It's like when you hurt yourself,

The pain tells us to do something.

If there was no pain,

There was no need for us to take rest,

To care for our twisted ankle,

For example.

So the pain is a pointer,

Is a pointer to act,

To do something.

So what pain is to the body,

Suffering is to the mind.

So suffering is a good thing.

It's playing its role.

It's pointing us that somewhere something is fundamentally wrong.

Otherwise,

Having a healthy body,

A good job,

Healthy family,

We should all be at peace.

But we've all been there when everything in our life is just fine.

If we write down all the blessings of our life on paper,

We would find no reason to be unhappy.

And yet,

We don't have peace.

So we can actually look and verify,

Is there any truth to what is being heard?

Can we see the mechanisms of fear and desire in our life?

What do we need to see for this fear and desire to drop off?

Is there a Santa Claus like mechanism we can see and our fear and suffering starts diminishing?

Are we open to something like this even happening in our life?

Because that is a powerful starting point to recognize that suffering is not inherent in the way we are living.

There might be a way out.

Being open to peace is the first invitation of peace that if we lean into,

We might find it.

And not the peace,

The temporary peace,

But the peace of daily life.

You know,

You know,

You see some people and they're just happy.

Their face looks so peaceful and for no reason in particular.

One way to investigate our fear and desire would be to ask ourselves,

How many times have I been afraid and desirous of things in my life in the past?

And every time we have envisioned a worst case scenario,

We have been distraught,

We've been angry,

We've been sad.

I know for me it is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times,

Not just about big things,

Even about small things.

And if I've experienced this desperation of sorts in the past,

I sit here,

I am here fully complete,

Regardless of anything that has happened,

Whether my fears came true or my desires didn't come through.

I'm still me.

And the longer we have lived,

The longer we have experienced this.

So we can ask ourselves,

Maybe half of our lives,

Maybe more than half of our lives has been lived in fear and desire.

And yet,

Would you say you are incomplete right now?

Are you missing a part of you?

Are you an incomplete?

You might feel incomplete,

But I'm not asking whether you feel incomplete or not.

Are you incomplete?

Ask yourself,

Am I incomplete?

You might think you're incomplete,

But ask yourself,

Am I incomplete?

And if the answer is no,

And I hope the answer is no,

Then what's to say,

What's to say that next desire or fear will make you incomplete?

I would go a step further and ask myself,

Have I ever experienced being incomplete?

Like one of the thought experiments my teacher asks us to do is,

Let's say you are a five-year-old boy or a girl and you were to take a selfie of yourself.

And when I say yourself,

I mean,

Not your thoughts,

Not your feelings,

Not the way you look,

Not what you're perceiving,

But you.

If you took a selfie at five years old,

And if you took a selfie at 15 years old,

All your thoughts are different.

All your feelings are different.

The way your body looks is very different.

Your perceptions are very different.

Yet there is something in you that you call you.

And if we do a selfie of that you,

And now if we are to take a selfie of ourselves right now,

Not our thoughts,

Not our feelings,

Not our perceptions,

Not our bodies,

But you,

Would there be a difference?

Or the only difference is in your thoughts,

Feelings,

Sensations,

And perceptions?

And that you've always been complete,

Full,

All along,

Despite the fear of being incomplete.

And if going back five,

15,

20,

30 years ago is a bit of a stretch,

Then we can start small by asking ourselves,

When you closed your eyes,

When the session began 25 minutes ago,

Between then and now,

Are you a different you?

Surely your sense perceptions,

That is my voice is different,

The words are different,

The way you feel in your body is different,

Your thoughts are different.

But are you a different you now than 25,

26 minutes ago?

Or have you lost some parts of you?

Or have you gained new parts?

And if the answer is no,

I'm the same.

Then what chance does your fear or desire have to take away peace from you?

The peace that is held ransom at feeling incomplete,

If our desires are not met,

Or losing something that we have that will make us incomplete.

Could be your seeing of Santa Claus can infuse our life with confidence and courage,

That my peace cannot be taken away from me.

This fear is only pointing to me holding ransom to my peace.

That's its only job.

This desire,

The desire of potential peace is only a mask.

It's only a pretense.

I won't get anything new at the end of the desire that I don't already have.

And I want you to see this for yourself.

Experiment,

Verify,

Refute,

But definitely investigate.

Thank you.

Reviews

Mitesh has a unique gift of wrapping Profound Truths in simple explanations… Exceptional!🙏🏽🌻🙏🏽 Thank you 😊