Question:

At times I feel like I have dropped a desire, but again it pops up with more intensity. And at times I feel I am dropping the desire but doubt arises if I am just resisting it. How to differentiate between dropping a desire and resisting a desire?

Answer:

When you resist, it will always come back up knocking at your door. That is the law – what you resist will definitely persist! Thus blind belief never works. Nobody is telling you to believe that dropping desires is going to benefit you. The scriptures say, ‘Use your intellect / Viveka to distinguish between what is good for you and what is not’. Validate by experimenting with your mind in the laboratory of this samsara, and draw an intellectual and logical inference. When you intellectually analyze something and reach a conclusion yourself, then that desire will drop away automatically and naturally. For e.g. one analyzes that drugs are not good for health and decides to refrain from recreational drugs.

When you force your mind to do something without giving it logic, the mind will always resist. Mind hates the sentence – ‘Because I said so’ 🙂 When you drop it with the aid of Viveka [intellectual maturity] then it will not bother you again. That is how faith in the scriptures will develop. The wise ones choose the path of Faith not the path of blind belief! So logically come to this understanding that desires are the road to misery!

Now how to distinguish between dropping and resisting/suppressing?

Desire means ‘you are not happy with what is’. But remember, by not accepting what is, it does not change. You are unnecessarily struggling with the flow of life. Life is a river. It has its own direction. As long as you struggle with what life brings your way, you will drown. Desiring something and running feverishly behind it is a struggle. Running away from something is also a struggle. Let go! Just float! Because when you stop struggling, you float, it is the law!

Float means what? It means act spontaneously! Just be with the water, if you fight the water you will drown. Whatever life throws your way, act accordingly! When it is silent, be silent! Act only when propelled by a trigger. A situation, a person, a thing, signals from your own body, etc are triggers. Drop unnecessary desires! Likes and dislikes are both desires. Just BE!