We have now understood the dynamics of desire and the role our senses play in this process. So, for the next few days before you go into the next sub-chapter, meditate and make a firm resolve, “From today, my meditation will give me the subtleness and awareness that I require to distinguish between need and greed. I will regulate my senses, thoughts, feelings and desires constantly. I will consciously seek only those people, relationships, objects and environments which will propel me towards my goal. I will stay away from all the things that will weaken my sense of purpose or block my progress in meditation.”
At the end of these wonderfully empowering days, we will continue our journey together to find how to eliminate more deep rooted negative qualities like cravings and addictions.
Eliminating temptations, cravings and addictions
My dear friend, you have now resolved to harness your senses regulate your desires by increasing your awareness and seeking objects, people, relationships and environment that will empower you, and staying away from everything that will weaken your resolve and distract you from your goal. Now that you understand the dynamics of desire, let us go a few steps further. If we want to regulate our desires or eliminate temptations, cravings and addictions, we must activate our faculty of discrimination so that we can discriminate between necessary and unnecessary, conducive and detrimental, and selfish and selfless desires. At the very onset of our journey, we had made a strong resolve to follow our conscience, which is the voice of our soul. Now is the time for us to review and reiterate this resolve.
If we have become attentive to our conscience and have been implementing its advice during these past few weeks, our faculty of discrimination will have become stronger. This will make it easier for us to regulate our desires now.
On the other hand, if we have unknowingly slipped back to the mode of ignoring our conscience whenever it suits us, we will have to reactivate our resolve to follow it all the time.
If we examine our lives honestly, we will find that though some of our mistakes have arisen out of ignorance, more often we have deliberately disobeyed our faculty of discrimination. Even though we are aware that what we have been thinking, talking or doing is wrong, we continue to do these things because it was easier and more convenient or simply because we are used to doing them that way. This is due to our inbuilt resistance to change that arises from the quality of inertia. At other times, in order to obtain the desired results quickly, we intentionally follow the wrong path. This is due to our result oriented thinking that sprouts from the hyperactive quality of excessive expectation.
