False Desires
I used to have a fear of desires. I often got something I thought I wanted or needed only to find that what I got wasn’t right for me. I felt stuck with my manifestations. That became exacerbated when I took a life detour into the positive thinking movement. Later, I dropped that mind game when I realized that I was actually creating a very powerful, destructive belief. Eventually, I would have to say positive affirmations before I took a breath. I tried a few more techniques like gratitude and visualization before realizing that techniques look good in the short run, but they make a mess of your life and your mind in the long run. I was cured.
But I was confused between true desires and false desires. I decided not to desire anything for awhile. Then my life drifted aimlessly down a path of boredom. Having no desires wasn’t the answer either. Looking back, I hit a place where I didn’t want false self desires anymore, and I didn’t yet have access to my True Self.
When I stepped on this quest for freedom, a vision mysteriously appeared in my mind. It actually seemed too good to be true, and it felt unemotional and calm. At that time, I was afraid it was a false self temptation. I thought the lack of emotion meant it was bad. I tried and tried to let it go. We can’t let go of True Self desires. Twenty years later, it’s still there; and I haven’t completely fulfilled it. But it’s getting closer.
That desire was crucial on my journey to freedom. It caused my beliefs to arise. It caused me to take risks in letting go. For the fun of it, I’ve since put some false self desires in my mind. I let go of my beliefs regarding those desires, and they always disappear.
When we’re letting go to manifest, we don’t need to know if a desire is True or false. I can’t say too often that the best thing about living life this way is that you CAN’T screw it up. On the other hand, fulfulling desires with willpower, rituals, and forced action is the cause of every problem on this planet — every one.
We don’t need to analyze our desires if we’re letting go. But here are some observations from my experience.
The fastest way to vet a desire is to ask ourself some questions like: Why do I want the desire? What does the fulfillment of this desire mean? What does it mean if I don’t fulfill the desire?
Emotions
If a desire is false, we’re often trying to get rid of our emotions. It appears that the fulfilled desire will relieve them. It doesn’t. The emotions were caused by our beliefs, not the unfulfilled desires. If we have emotions and desire money, it’s the belief that we don’t have enough money that generates the emotions. This is why rich people have the disease of “never enough.” They never get rid of the belief in lack. They just keep fixing the effect.
Emotions are a red flag of false desires. Our false self feeds off of emotions. If it can label an emotion good, we’ll generate unlimited emotional food.
Positive emotions are a major illusion trap. Emotions are a “warning signal” to tell us when our thinking is off. They aren’t positive or negative; it’s the labels that make them so. Emotions like hope, excitement, romance, even passion and conditional love are all signs that we’re chasing a false dream. Our True Self is like still waters — it’s calm.
True Desires
The only way to know if a desire is true is to keep letting go until you get the desire or it disappears. True desires match the characteristics of the True Self; we alone have the talent and wisdom to achieve them.
Usually our True Self desires seem too obvious. People try to turn them into a mission or purpose. The True Self just wants to enjoy life and create in its own unique way. Take someone like Oprah. Her True Self loves to ask questions, and she’s damn good at it. But when she takes her True Self gift and tries to fix the world, she jumps around and screams a lot. She becomes over the top with excitement. That’s her false self hijacking her True Self.
True Self desires are win-win. They’re harmless to others. Being the Wolf of Wall Street can’t be a True Self desire. Co-creating abundance with others in a win-win manner could very well be a True Self desire. Often people are expressing their True Self in their current work or hobbies, but they don’t know it. This happened to me with my technology business. I cleaned out every belief that was win-lose about that business. Suddenly, my mundane company was unique, successful, and fun. My True Self was happy but not for life. It eventually got another desire. It’s the false self that likes to put us in a box for life.
False selves will label our True Self things like selfish, arrogant, or a lazy. They’ll say they aren’t serving humanity. They’ll say we’re wasting time because we’re not in action. The judgement of false selves can hurt a lot unless you realize the emotion you feel when they say what they say proves that their words aren’t true. You let their words go, and they don’t trap you or hold you back. The illusion is 180 degrees from the truth. People in the illusion won’t understand you. It’s normal.
True Self desires are often difficult to unveil. But once we do, we’ve got the ticket that will take us all the way to freedom. We just keep chipping away at every belief about the desire. Eventually we’ll find that our True Self, freedom, the fulfillment of our desires, and Heaven on Earth are simply different ways of saying the exact same thing.