Don't our desires motivate us to do everything?

When starting on the spiritual path, it is difficult to understand how one can live life without attachment to desires or how to lose identification with one’s individual ego. After all, our desires drive us to do everything and we do it to benefit ourselves personally, either to fulfill an inner need or to improve our physical circumstances.  It’s natural to seek pleasure and avoid pain.  Won’t giving these things up just make us stop wanting to do anything?

            You cannot avoid acting in this world.   If you really could become actionless you wouldn’t be able to maintain your body.  The truth is, no one is free from some kind of action for a single moment.  Even if you could control your physical body and cease to move, your mind would soon compel you into action.  You are deluding yourself if you think that the way to God realization is to separate yourself from involvement in the activities of the world.  No one reaches the ultimate goal of union with God by forsaking all actions.  You must learn to let go of your attachments and act, not for your own sake, but for the benefit of those around you.

The state known as "being established in God"

True inner peace can be experienced by anyone who is free from all craving and who gives up all identification with his or her personal ego and its notion of “me” and “mine.”  The realization of this state is known as “being established in God” because one is completely identified with the image of God within.  When a person becomes completely identified with that real inner self, there are no longer any questions about what is true and correct.  That person cannot be deluded because he or she intuitively knows the truth.  At the moment of physical death, that person attains the final permanent state of union with God.

When your mind is poised and withdraws itself from the fluctuations that come from attachment to your desires as well as the pleasure and pain of your physical body, you will obtain the wisdom to discriminate between reality and illusion.  When someone has that discriminating wisdom, things that seem important to most people will not matter as much and the things that don’t matter to the average person become valuable.

Peace of mind

If you learn to remain detached from the fluctuations that impact your mind and body you will attain an unshakable inner calmness.  When you become firmly established in that calmness, all grief and sorrow falls away.  The bliss of the soul can then emerge.  The mind that is blown here and there by every wind of change cannot experience that tranquility and will have no peace.  And without peace of mind, how can anyone be happy?

How desires lead to anger which causes faulty thinking

Attachment to having the things you want, getting your way or having pleasurable experiences will just breed a craving for them.  When your cravings are not satisfied you become angry and frustrated.  Anger confuses your thinking process.  When your thinking is confused, it alters the way you remember the events going on around you.  When you remember things incorrectly, it will change the way you reason because you will be basing your judgment on faulty information.  When your reasoning is faulty you are doomed to make the wrong decision.  All this comes from indulging yourself in sensual pleasures instead of learning to control your mind.  Meditation will help with this.

The secret to overcoming attachment

If you allow yourself to become excited by the things that happen to you, you will lose your better judgment, even if you are really striving for enlightenment.  If you dwell on thoughts of doing things that are pleasurable to your mind and body, you will just amplify your attachment to whether you get them or not.  If you abstain from things that over-stimulate your mind and body, they will be physically absent but the longing for them will still remain.  But the spiritual seeker who learns to control his or her senses through meditation will be free from even the longing for them.

How can you recognize this inner wisdom as being true and correct?  How does someone act when they are firmly centered in that wisdom?  A person who is undisturbed by difficulties because they have let go of their personal desires is anchored in this steady wisdom.  This wise person is free of mental attachments to the temporary circumstances of this world and thus does not suffer anxiety when things are difficult.  He or she is free from fear and anger.  Whoever is free of attachment is not overly excited when good things happen nor dejected when things go badly, that person is wise, indeed.