The desire for the more
Article by Dhyan Vimal
Today we ask a question, why is the desire for more not birthed? The current desires that we have, if you really study it, are desires to escape.
We desire money, fame … many things you desire in the world, like ‘I want to be happy’. These are desires and if you really study them, they are the desire to escape. They are not the desire for the more.
If you have been sad, a desire will be born not to be sad, if you are poor, a desire is born not to be poor – it’s a desire born to escape an experience. If you have a stressful job, you will have a desire for an easy job. So these are not real desires, these are the movements of escape.
So we are asking the question – why the desire for the more is not birthed in many?
Enlightenment is a kind of desire too. Like illumination or ‘I want to be free’. I’m not talking about ‘I want to be free from a pain’; I want to be free in principle.
More than 90% of humanity will never touch the desire for the more, all their desires will be the desire to escape. If someone says ‘I am somebody who is not beautiful’, they will desire to be beautiful to escape the pain of not being beautiful.
So most of the basic desires are born out of pain. Very few desires are born out of bliss, born out of delight and many do not understand this at all. There is a movement from bliss to bliss. There is a movement from one height to another.
That is why most will never come to even touch enlightenment because enlightenment is not a movement of sadness, it’s a movement of bliss to bliss. That’s why most will never come to love. Love – as how people use it now – is an experience of the pain of being unloved, so you want love to get out of that pain; but real love is it loves to love. It is a movement of bliss to bliss to bliss.
The question I want us to enter: why doesn’t it happen to more?
The question is, why is the desire for more not birthed? If we go backward a little bit, almost all desires that you have are motivated by the pain you have experienced. And these desires at most can help you to deal with the pain, they cannot give you bliss.
If you suffer because of lack of money and when you make a lot of money it cannot make you happy, it just prevents that hurt. You are walking barefoot and stones are poking your feet; wearing shoes will not make you happy, you will just not experience that pain anymore.
That is why most people who are moving in this direction of living and thinking inevitably will feel bored and will somehow go through a life of escape, intoxication … they’ll go there. Then the whole point of living is not to feel anything and to escape everything.
Again the question: why does the desire for the more not happen, why?
Like we have heard in the past, somebody desires to be one with God or somebody desires to go beyond the mind, somebody desires liberation, or the experience of oneness… If you are not one with someone then you are not feeling this pain, there’s no pain, but you are missing the bliss.
If there is disharmony then you want harmony because you don’t like disharmony, right? Whenever there is no disharmony you will never even want harmony, but in order to want harmony you must live a life with no rhythm.
Why doesn’t the desire for more happen to anyone?
It appears to me it’s like a gift that happens to someone … it’s like a gift that happens to you, that somehow in your life you escape the normal movement and somehow you are moving into a higher experience, higher truth, higher reality, a higher enrichment.
It is not that one cannot live without love. One can. Many do. One can, but love is the enrichment for the reason for living. To live, love is not needed; all that is needed is food, clothing, shelter. But love becomes the more, the very purpose for existing is for the more. But why do people miss the desire for the more?
One of the primary reasons is the unawareness of oneself. You are not aware of who you are. You are not aware, you seem to think that you are that which wants to escape pain, you haven’t come to see what you are is that which moves from bliss to bliss. Right now what you are is nothing but a survival mechanism, what you are is nothing but a mechanism that prevents pain, but you fail to realise you are actually a movement of bliss.
But let me go back to the question, this question needs to be driven in. Why is the desire for more not happening? Even when somebody speaks about the more it is a distorted view of trying to escape the less. People think when you become enlightened you go beyond the suffering of the world. Not really. It’s again used as a tool to go beyond suffering. You don’t go to aloneness because togetherness is hell, you go to aloneness because that’s the real bliss. When you move from bliss to bliss, you will move to aloneness, it is not because relationship is hell.
Why isn’t the desire for more happening? You see, one of the conspiracies or one of the missteps or the wrong that has been done is they have taken the teaching that is dedicated for the movement of the more and found a way to use it for living problems. That’s where everything goes wrong. They took meditation which is the tool for someone who wants to move towards the more and gave it to someone who’s suffering from stress. It is reduced.
It’s like marriage was designed to honour a union that has happened, not a ceremony to create union. The union must happen and then in order to honour the union they did a ceremony, you understand? Now we do a ceremony and think by that ceremony two people have become in union. For a fact if the inner union has happened, the ceremony is unnecessary.
I’m asking the question of why is the desire for more is not happening? Why is it for the larger of humanity the desire for more never comes to be? Like if you take a Mozart, if you take a Van Gogh, you take anybody, these I’m using as examples of people who wanted more, they wanted to be in bliss. If I ask, how much energy do you spend in pursuing your bliss? Is there a demand for bliss within you?
When the demand for the bliss happens in you, the discipline to live in the pursuit of the bliss will be birthed. Then discipline does not appear like a torture, it looks like the least I can do to live my bliss out.
If I use an example of a relationship, almost all relationships are nothing but utilitarian. It’s designed for solving one problem; you are getting something out of the person, the person is getting something out of you, you both are avoiding a problem that you have without having each other, but now having each other as a solution to a problem becomes another problem. It is not two people coming together in the pursuit of bliss, a higher bliss. You have a problem being alone, the other person has a problem being alone, you both being together solving the problem of being alone, by that there is no happiness, only that you can’t feel the problem anymore.
I’m asking the question: why is it that so few come to pursue bliss?