Your Greatest Desire

It is so important to be absolutely clear about what we want. What we really want. I mean, many folks come to Satsang, or listen to spiritual stuff thinking that they want to know the Truth. They want to have a direct experience with the source of all Life. They want to know who and what they are. But it has been my experience that even though people say that they want the Truth, they really want something else. Something imagined.

To really know the Truth, and have it be integrated into our Life, we need to be ready to give up everything else. And the way we find ourselves capable of this is through our intense love for Truth. Truth will begin to expose all the ideas we have about what Truth is, and what awakening is. And sometimes the ways it does this isn't pretty. And much of the times it can really challenge our devotion to Truth, because it keeps shattering all our hopes around what awakening is going to give us. But through this shattering the fire of our devotion gets stronger and brighter. Truth asks us to be ready to give up our entire Life in order for us to allow it to live through us. And most folks have no idea what this means. Most folks think knowing Truth is going to give them some sort of spiritual holiday- something that will take away all their problems; all the bad parts of themselves that they don't like. But Truth might not take away any of the "bad" stuff. Not for awhile anyways. It just might make us live with it until we finally let go enough of our expectations from Truth. Because Truth doesn't give anything. It takes away everything that we are projecting onto Truth. And in doing so, only Truth remains, brilliant and clear, from our own intense Love for Truth. From this clarity we begin to live a balanced and harmonious life.

A friend made a gorgeous suggestion which I will take the liberty to pass on here. He said make a list of all the things that you desire in your life. Be honest about it. And I would suggest that you number which of the things are the most important down to the lesser important. Its essential that you are ruthlessly honest here. If you say you want the Truth, but then find yourself homeless and without money, where does your devotion to Truth go? So give yourself some time to look at this. If you are more devoted to your money than you are to Truth, then make sure you number that accordingly. Its perfectly alright. Just be honest about it.

Truth is going to test our devotion. Its going to take us to the brink of death. Its going to see if we are ready to let go of everything for it. If we feel the intense desire for the Infinite Reality to touch all aspects of our Life, its going to bring us face to face with death. And then its going to let us choose. And we will find Love leading us right into the fear of death. What remains is what continues on.