One thing’s for sure, that we all want things.
We all want a lot of things.
And what does it mean to want something? It’s like we’re craving this end state, this state of having achieved what we want, and we want to feel better by achieving that end state.
So this idea of wanting: we place ourselves, we feel ourselves, in a state where something is missing.
“I am not all right.
I am not perfectly OK.
I’m somehow less than perfect right now, because there’s this thing outside me that I want.” And we have this- it’s like this hunger and a craving for something that’s outside us.
So naturally, we want to achieve the object of our desire.
Whatever we want, we want.
We want what we want.
Again, more of my completely obvious statements.
So we want these things, and we want that feeling that we’ve gotten them, and then we have satisfaction.
It’s like the wanting gives us a kind of discomfort, we’re a bit uncomfortable, that kind of awkward, uncomfortable feeling something’s not quite right, and we really want that feeling of we get it, and then we can relax into “Ah, it’s all OK.” So we want to end the desire.
We want to end the wanting.
We want to achieve what we want, and then stop wanting it.
So it’s like going through life just wanting to stop wanting.
And it just goes on and on, because there’s always more things to want.
So it seems like one of the most useful lessons, the most useful abilities, is to be able to be OK with that state of wanting.
To be able to feel the wanting without that sense of craving like “I really want that wanting to go away.” It’s like you’re hungry, you’re really hungry, so you’re just “Oh, I just want that feeling of not being hungry.
I want to be full.” But imagine just being OK with that state and actually just feeling that wanting, and letting that be OK.
Instead of feeling like “This wanting must be killed.
This wanting must be ended.” We can simply live in that state of want.
Now, I mean in some ways it sounds kind of terrible, because you know, of course we want what we want.
So how can we just be OK with not having it? Well, for one thing, that want is there for a good reason.
I mean, that feeling of hunger and lack, that we want something: it seems to be that’s a built-in part of what life is all about, what it means to be alive.
To have no desire for anything: seems like that’s to not have life at all.
As long as we’re alive, life is always seeking that next thing.
There’s always something more.
It always needs to replenish itself.
So in some ways I think when we feel that sense of wanting, of desire, wanting something we don’t have: that is something close to feeling the life force itself, feeling the feeling of aliveness.
With that hunger, that is just a very palpable feeling of this is what it’s like to be alive.
Which I imagine can be very uncomfortable, but I think a lot of the discomfort about it is in how we process it, how we interpret it.
But the feeling itself, OK, it’s a feeling of wanting.
We want things.
And that’s- maybe there’s certain discomfort there, because we want things, we don’t have them.
But then we get into this whole interpretation of it.
“Oh, it means I’m missing something.
I’m not OK because I don’t have this thing.
And you know, I really need to have this thing before I can be OK.” And all this layer of interpretation that makes it even more uncomfortable.
But imagine just accepting that we want things.
As long as we’re alive, we will want things, and so that feeling of hunger and desire is just part of being alive.
And so yeah, sure, we still want what we want, we still want to have that desire satisfied, but we don’t really need to really crave to have that desire go away to crave to have it end, because that’s life.
We only get temporary satisfaction for anything, and then we get the desire again as long as we are still alive.
So imagine simply having a desire for desire itself, simply celebrating that this desire, this hunger, is something that is a part of being alive.
Instead of trying to make it stop, we can simply celebrate that it’s there and it does seem like it can give us a lot of fuel to keep us moving.
Possibly where we want to go, possibly in bad directions, but that’s a different story.
#desire #alwayshungry #craving