For the early part of my life, till my mid-40s, i swung like a pendulum with my desires. They triggered guilt, shame, defensiveness, and disappointment as well as creativity, excitement, passion, inspiration, joy, and fun.
One of the practices (i have many that i utilise daily) that helped me transform my understanding of desire and supported me in cultivating equanimity and peace was listening to the Rudram (Mantras from the Rig Veda). As listened to these sacred Sanskrit mantras every day for a few years, the Truth (I AM – Eternal Emptiness) that had been awakened in me in my 20s, began to take root. My desires either dissolved, or i stopped trying to make them happen.
The shift was a simple one, but incredibly profound. I became free from wanting and centred in trusting.
The phrase, “I want…” transformed effortlessly into “Bless me with…”. This meant, I stopped holding on and started letting go, allowing the flow of grace into every area of my life. Everything comes to fruition in the fullness of time. IT IS SO, SO IT IS.
Here is a recording of the Sathya Sai Students singing:
The Rudram Namakam– Adoration of the Absolute (The Creator)
The Rudram Chamakam – Seeking the blessings of the Absolute (The Creator)
If you would like to find out more about Rudram, let us know.
Desires make you susceptible
It’s one thing to live life on purpose, guided by love and truth, and quite another to live life moving from one desire to the next. The latter is how most people live.
When your desires overpower your conscience, or your ability to listen to your intuition, you begin to delude yourself into believing that your way is the only way, it’s the right way.
If you have ever got “played” in your life, it’s because someone knew how to use your desires to manipulate you. Your desire for recognition, approval, accolades, wealth, weight loss, beauty etc., makes you vulnerable to forces that seek to take advantage of you.
Your desires make you susceptible to exploitation and control. It’s not a bad or good thing. It’s simply useful to be aware of this. Your awareness of this gives you choice. The choice to become a conscious participant in the game of life, instead of an unconscious pawn.
The desire to serve
The desire to serve humanity or your neighbour is an admirable one. It is uplifting for everyone concerned. Even in this one can learn many lessons of discernment and detachment.
I have enjoyed feeding the hungry, serving at orphanages, working with age concern, giving sessions to those in need and more. At present, I am volunteering as a Trustee for EFT International. It’s a very different kind of service with a huge learning curve.
I was born with a desire to serve; to feed, to nourish, to support, to care, to listen, to fight for the downtrodden, to uplift. Like all desires, this too was one that people could take advantage of. I learnt it’s not enough to send money, provide goods, or hold hands, one has to be detached, show up, and discern. Giving one’s time and energy is equally important as sharing resources. The moment you get attached to the community you serve, your choices become coloured and are no longer free from fear. When the call to serve arises from intuition, you can rest assured you will be supported by unseen divine forces.
A fun story
I have a fun story from 25 years ago. One Christmas, Eddie, I, and a friend of ours decided we were going to feed the homeless on Oxford Street (a popular shopping area) in London. From 4 am to 11 am, we sat and put together gift boxes of sandwiches, crisps, cake, sweets and juice. We buttered a lot of bread that morning and cut a lot of cheese slices all the while singing. Soon after, we headed out elated with a carload of goodies. When we arrived, the place was deserted, we could barely find anyone, after driving up and down the entire area, within a 4-mile radius, we struggled to find 30 people.
We were tired, it was 4 pm, getting dark, when Eddie spotted a salvation army van and a man setting up a table, we approached him and said we had close to 300 Christmas food parcels, and would they like to distribute them. His face lit up and he said, “We would love to take them off your hands, we just have tea and biscuits tonight and it would be a perfect Christmas gift“. And then he said, “sounds like you have the perfect number too, that’s how many we are expecting to drop by for a cuppa”. We had such great intentions, but we didn’t check in with our intuition. Fortunately, there was help at hand.
When in service it is good to ask, are you meeting your needs, or are you meeting the reality?
“I don’t want to know”
This is one of those desires to watch out for. The desire to live in the bubble of denial and ignorance.
I don’t want to know that my phone has parts that exploit child labour
Don’t want to know that i am responsible for some of the plastic waste in the seas
I don’t want to know about my boss bullying or taking advantage of others
Don’t want to know, i just want to get on with my life
Because then i would have to act on it and I want the easy life.
Whenever Eddie and I hear ourselves or others say, I don’t want to know… we inquire, where is that coming from? Sometimes, it’s perfectly in alignment with being loving and protecting someone’s privacy. Sometimes, it’s selfish, self-serving, and one of the reasons dictators of the past got away with murder.
In my world, ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is separation from bliss. Agreed, knowing the truth can be painful and uncomfortable. Taking responsibility, listening to one’s conscience, and trusting one’s intuition are some of the steps that align us with Nature’s wisdom and this transports us to the Bliss within.
It’s about T I M E + I want it NOW – The instant gratification trap
One of the challenges that many people struggle with is – time. They feel they don’t have enough of it. People are impatient and want stuff now. They loathe waiting for things to happen. It is an area where scarcity consciousness plays out in ways that are incredibly stressful and disempowering.
I was no different, i was caught in the “i don’t have enough time” loop and the “why hasn’t this happened already” loop for years. In the process, i robbed myself of time. The LiberatingTouch (LT) Processes and Sequences helped me shift this. Now, when I look at the clock, I find myself thinking – “I have (loads of) time” instead of “i am running out of time”.
Once you realise there is no death, time changes meaning. Consciousness is evolving, eternal, ever-present and everlasting. Time and space are the parameters through which consciousness manifests. But I am running ahead of myself as Birth and Death is the topic for next month’s blog.
T I M E = Trust In Miracles Everyday
TIME = Trust in Miracles Eternally
What if this was the sign of the T I M E S
Trust In Miracles Every Second, I do…
I have witnessed greed transform into generosity, confusion into clarity, coldness into compassion, fear into fearlessness, disappointment into devotion, and selfish consumerism into selfless collaborations. I don’t just believe in miracles, i trust them. In the perfection of time, miracles (the calling cards of Love and Truth – God) arise exactly as they are meant to and there is very little we need to do about this.
Desire and Sacrifice
Sacrifice comes with the territory if you are a parent, a partner in a committed relationship, a leader, or a spiritual seeker. Sacrificing your desires and attachment for love is what you do.
Kate’s Thoughts on Desire
Desires – a want, a burning must-have. What must I have? My association with desire is peaceful. However, I have struggled with writing about desires and I wanted to unpack why.
It hasn’t always felt so peaceful, particularly when I look back at battling health projects when I was a teenager and struggling with body image in my 20s. I felt very caught up in the whirlwind of desire and to be desirable. It was a tough journey but one that had been laid with strong foundations to help guide my way.
My Childhood
My childhood was delightfully child-led. I was listened to, valued, and had the freedom of choice. I didn’t get everything I wanted of course, but I was helped to understand the consequences of those choices and the importance of boundaries. This in turn helped to dispel the power of ‘I want’ when choices were given.
Additionally, some simple principles helped to dispel excessiveness which I believe is in part role-modelling not to buy items excessively or without need, part a respect for material things and for their natural reuse and recycling, and also the basic language of requests to simply say: “Please may I have…”, rather than “I want…”, which creates subliminal respect between it not being a given, patience and not being attached to a specific outcome.
My parents would also instill a confidence in me that I could be anything I wanted to be and that the world was my oyster. They did not hold back and I am eternally grateful for their encouragement in everything I did.
Now
Now as a mother, environmental and climate change scientist and an Early Years Montessori Practitioner, I understand the power of my parents’ approach. When I was growing up my mother did not know of Maria Montessori’s work that encourages independence and choice, but within her, she already knew of the power of freedom of choice, of being valued and respected and being listened to. My mother also knew that education about the world around us only opened our eyes to new experiences, new friendships and new opportunities; that it would give us an awareness that you just can’t teach in the classroom. She sought every opportunity for my sister and me to experience the world, to experience nature and encouraged our interactions with it.
THAT
This ignited within me my connection to ‘That’; and ‘That’ was within everything I saw, albeit I didn’t realise it at the time. As I grew older, I wanted more than anything to be immersed in nature and within cultures, people and places. I yearned to feel free as a bird and took to skydiving to see the world from above; to feel the cool depths of the ocean as I sank beneath the waves, scuba diving on the world’s most pristine coral reefs; to feel the sweat and exhaustion of trekking through the jungle to see rare proboscis monkeys; to feel the adrenalin and power of rafting fast, bubbling, white water rivers; to feel the sticky heat, hustle and bustle of a local market in remote villages.
I was fascinated to learn all the stories about the people and of each place, and together it gave me the keys to nature. To experience all of these things, took hard work, and long hours for me to earn the money to live, and to travel, but within it there was also an internal drive to fulfil my passion, to fulfil my purpose.
The Purpose
Before LiberatingTouch (LT), I was aware of my extraordinary connective experiences and love of nature. I knew that my purpose was to help the people of the world balance their relationship with nature, but I did not realise my connection to nature was beyond the physical. Before LT, I would strive to make things happen, with sheer determination. I would be the doer, I held all the control, and I would succeed because I would use my intelligence, creativity and determination to achieve it. It was linear, it was scientific, it was not relying on anyone else.
Now, I feel that my desires have been fulfilled not only because of my strong will but my connection to my purpose and my connection to Nature – to ‘That’. I do not have a connection to a body form of a ‘God’ but instead an immersion with the One, the omnipresence of existence.
Knowing and Trusting
I appreciate the finer workings of the happenings. Notice the efforting, I am aware of attempts to control the outcome, I apply my intelligence, creativity and determination but with a vast dose of trust and connection to my intuitive guidance within. I immerse myself in the vast ocean of ‘That’. I breathe in light and I exhale dark, and increasingly I can hand over whatever thoughts of desire I have; to give it to the omnipresence, to send it love so that the energies align and for it to unfold perfectly, as it is meant to, and in ‘That’ I trust.
It is a process of knowing and trusting, not forcing and tuning in.
And as Ma (Aparna, of Mudra Wisdom) once told me, at the end of working through the LT Sequence of Release together: Tat’thas tu: So it is, it is so.
Kate is a multi-talented, multi-faceted LiberatingTouch (LT) Facilitator and soon-to-be LT Instructor. She combines, music, art, science, diving, environmental wisdom, Jin Shin Jyutsu, experiential know-how and so much more while walking side by side with her clients, students, and workshop attendees supporting them as they step into their purpose and power. You can get in touch with her via email – kate@acuityhouse.com
That is all for now. Blessings and love, Ranjana
Ps. We invite you to join our next LiberatingTouch® workshop “Living Compass” beginning 9th September 2023. Details can be found at: https://fb.me/e/G7cp0c9e Learn how to navigate life with joy (Love) and self-awareness (Truth).
*LiberatingTouch® (LT) IS: Yoga (Truth), Conscious living (Self-Responsibility), Meditation (Peace), Healing (Love).
