WHAT IS DESIRE?
It all begins with your innate, passionate desire to want and to have something. It is only human to long for and want a thing, a person or an outcome. This wanting or longing is what a desire is. Believe it or not your true self is a reflection of your deep seated desires. Your character, mental, emotional and physical states are to a great extent influenced by your desires. You become an epitome of these wants that you have.
Desires may not necessarily be materialistic. A person engaged in spiritual pursuits may have spiritual desires, though to a worldly person they may not seem as desires they are nevertheless wants and desires which the person wants to gratify. In both cases i.e worldly and spiritual desires the person would have to take appropriate actions to realize the same .
THE ‘KARMA’ CIRCLE
Once a desire blooms the freewill or rather will comes into play and you start taking actions to achieve your goal or mission. Action being not only a deed but also a chain of thoughts and words spoken. To be precise your ‘ Karma’ comes alive and starts to build on to the ultimate reality .i.e your destiny.
Once the seed of desire is sown it sprouts into freewill or the freedom we have to control our actions. God or any other supernatural power is only a guiding force, the ultimate truth of good or bad, right or wrong, fair or unfair resides in the depths of our mind and heart alone.
This highlights the need to distinguish between natural and unnatural desires. Natural desires being the innate desires that you are born with and unnatural being the ones destructive to society and the environment.
What sets a person of substance apart from the crowd is the will to take actions to realize his desires . He conducts himself by visualizing the end result and then drawing an action plan , achieving milestones by his actions and arriving at the destination. There is a difference in your imagined goal and the goal that naturally comes as a result of your deep, innermost cravings. If you fear arriving at an unwanted destination then this is reason enough to re-examine your desires.
DESTINY VS FREEWILL
The idea of a fixed destiny can be highly demotivating .It immobilizes one from taking action to realize ones goals. All the events and happenings in our life course have not been laid down before hand. Well ,maybe some but not all. When we think of destiny especially in the eastern context it is understood as submission to a laid out plan by the Almighty and with no choice in the matter.
To quote William Jennings Bryan-“Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for , it is a thing to be achieved”.
To fulfill our desires we must firmly hold them and not let them slip or else we will get back to where we started. Believing in a fixed destiny can lead to excessive fatalism.
But it would not be wrong to state that one must suffer for the past misdeeds and acts. So, in a way destiny is fixed in terms of what consequences you bear by the merit or demerit of your past actions.
The law of cause and effect propogates that every cause that is created by what we think and do will result in time in corresponding effects . This is so much in line with the Newtonian principle according to which every action produces an equal and opposite reaction.
There are scientists who believe that some sort of determinism exists in the nature of human beings. For example Professor Einstein said “Honestly I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about freedom of the human will’. This clearly implies of forces greater than will at work which determine events.”
So if you have a natural desire which is in tandem with your environment then realizing your ultimate destiny would not be impossible as long as you persist and hold onto your desires. If you have an unnatural desire you may realize what you perceive as your ultimate destiny but don’t be naïve enough to think that your ‘ Karma’ will let you get away with it. The brunt of your doings has to be borne by you and you alone.
“Your existence is a river-like chain in which every step is determined by the past. Your future is not really future;it is just a by-product of the past. It is only the past determining, shaping, formulating and conditioning your future. That is why your future is predictable”.-Osho (Rajneesh).
There are tendencies that a man inherits genetically and has little control over. This does not mean a cure is impossible, deliberate efforts can alter the course of the so called fixed destiny. There are numerous examples of medical ailments inherited being cured by proper medication and medical treatment. Astrological science too clearly indicates that efforts to perform actions correctly will be rewarded. In case of traits or characterteristics like skin color, hair color or body structure you are fated to have them. It takes quite a few generations until these are lost and your descendents acquire a new set of traits. But in your lifetime you have been fated to have these.
Certain native Americans possess a gene which causes diabetes. This gene is activated if they eat incessantly for twelve months in a year but if they employ their freewill and eat incessantly only three to four months in a year then the potential diabetes remains dormant.
To quote Jawahar Lal Nehru “ Life is like a game of cards . The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is freewill.”
So embark on this exciting journey on the road of freewill to lead you to your destination i.e your destiny on the chariot of ‘Karma’ drawn by your willful natural desires.
