By Steve Beckow, June 16, 2021
(Golden Age of Gaia)
From the Tao:
“The secret waits for the insight
Of eyes unclouded by longing;
Those who are bound by desire
See only the outward container.” (1)
Let me use these last waning days of “eyes unclouded by longing” and not “bound by desire” to describe what it feels like to be desireless. Pretty soon it’ll be gone and I’ll be back to my “everyday consciousness.”
When I’m desireless, there’s space for a natural me to arise, the Natural Self, my playful child and expressive adult.
When I’m full of desires, an “I” arises – we call it the ego – whose major business at that moment is to accomplish that desire for me. “I want” becomes my mantra. The “I” arose in service of the “want.” Krishna says:
“‘I wanted this and to-day I got it. I want that: I shall get it to-morrow. All these riches are now mine: soon I shall have more. I have killed this enemy. I will kill all the rest. I am a ruler of men. I enjoy the things of this world. I am successful, strong and happy. Who is my equal? I am so wealthy and so nobly born. I will sacrifice to the gods. I will give alms. I will make merry.’ That is what they say to themselves, in the blindness of their ignorance.” (2)
We have egos craving and averting: “I want/I don’t want.”
“Those who are bound by desire
See only the outward container.”
Those who are bound by desire remain very much in a lower-density space. Their attention turned to the physical, worldly, material, they either can’t see, don’t see, postpone, or ignore the spiritual.
That’s not to say that turning one’s attention to the spiritual will reveal “the secret.” The Mother and our guides decide when that will be.
Desirelessness brings peace. It brings satisfaction. It brings rest.
It’s like an island of refuge in a sea of chaos. All of it created by ourselves from our many desires.
Footnotes
(1) Lao Tzu, The Way of Life. The Tao Te Ching. trans. R.B. Blakney. New York, etc.: Avon, 1975, 53.
(2) Sri Krishna in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, trans., Bhagavad-Gita. The Song of God. New York and Scarborough: New American Library, 1972; c1944, 115.