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Desires Quotes

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Desires Quotes

“Fighting the desire inside her and becoming friends, only friends, had been painful at first, yet she had done it for Lyric. She had repeated to herself a mantra. It’s not about me, it’s not about me. Not about what she wanted, but what Lyric needed. She had a responsibility to this little one to do more than feed and clothe her, but to show her that she wasn’t alone in the world. That she had a team, people who put her joy first. If it meant she and Stuart had to put their happiness on the shelf, so be it. Until she realized how it had set them free. Friends are not perfect and tidy and forever poised. Friends, true friends, can come to each other with their frayed edges and belly laughs.”

“I don’t want enlightenment. I want to enjoy this life. There is a reason why God gifted us with a mind and five senses. We wouldn’t be having them if our goal was to undermine their existence. We are here to feel. Emotions, pleasure and pain of all sorts. Becoming emotionally numb is, therefore, not our purpose. It certainly can never be!”

“She felt the cold blast from the sterile air conditioning on her bare arms and thighs, as she ambled down the center of the shopping complex's ground floor. The scene was a swirl of candy bright lights--the Victoria's Secret fuchsia signboard, signboards which lured one to purchase "confidence," or "sexual appeal," or whatever it was that was being advertised--the fluorescent lights in each store, contrasting with the shiny, black-tiled walls and eye-catching speckled marble tiles on the ground. One could lick the floor--the tiles were spotless, clean like the fake air she was breathing in, like the atoms and cells in her that were decaying in stale neglect.”

“Civilization could not exist without tremors of desire and without the counteracting, negation force of disciplined denial. Nor would the gyratory pulsations of a lively civilization exist devoid of the convulsive chemistry of union and repellency. We are born with a desire to be immortal. Cursed with the knowledge that we must die, people live their orthodox lives out by displaying reckless abandon as to the outcome of human life or nervously hounded by utter despondency nipping their heels. How we resolve this decidedly human complex of carrying out our daily lives while burden by our inescapable mortality determines our essential character. The collation of similar values adopted by our community determines who we are as a people.”

“Let me be clear that I’m not judging desire per se. One’s motivation to live simply is itself a form of desire. We can’t escape desire; nor should we try to, in my opinion. But I do wish to point out that desire, like a laser on a swivel, can be redirected from the outside to the inside—with astonishing results of a magical nature when focused on healing, transformation, and transcendence.”

“True love is found only when paths cross, not from the angle of what is observed within a cognitive conceptualization but rather the angle of spiritual desire. It is in this outcome, manifested in a receiving through giving, gaining through offering and winning through losing, that you understand the mystery veiled by the emotions you have attracted. Then, and only then, you will understand the limitations of distance, time and location as merely distractions in the path to the ultimate goal, which is the fulfilling of your own faith. That faith is rewarded through the eyes that will reflect your own desires.”

“[Desires as seen on 3 planes of existence: Physical, Astral & Causal] Physical desires are rooted in egotism and sense pleasures. The compulsion or temptation of sensory experience is more powerful than the desire-force connected with astral attachments or causal perceptions. Astral desires center around enjoyment in terms of vibration. Astral beings enjoy teh ethereal music of the spheres and are entranced by the sight of all creation as exhaustless expressions of changing light. The astral beings also smell, taste and touch light. Astral desires ar thus connected with an astral being's power to precipitate all objects and experiences as forms of light or as condensed thoughts or dreams. Causal desires are fulfilled by perception only. The nearly-free beings who re encased only in teh causal body see the whole universe as realizations of the dream-idaes of God; they can materialize anything and everything in sheer thought. Causal beings therefore consider the enjoyment of physical sensations or astral delights as gross and suffocating to the soul's fine sensibilities. Causal beings work out their desires by materializing them instantly. pg 425, Chapter 43, The Resurrection of Sri Yukteswar”

“Happiness is an adaptation which, in times past, motivated us to seek that which was good for us. Our happiness-seeking circuitry, long evolved in situations where sugar, comfort, abundance, and safe thrills were rare, is now on overdrive, helping us find that which markets have made ubiquitous. So we need to reschool our happiness-seeking circuitry, train it to find and appreciate legitimately rare or valuable things. Sugar, comfort, abundance, and safe thrills are no longer legitimately rare or valuable. Love and relationship, and the time and space to exist in ways not dictated by external forces—these are increasingly rare, and have always been valuable.”

“In the moment, an anticipated rush of sugar, or of dopamine, or sinking into a couch to be entertained by a screen, can seem like the best thing in the world. But it is not those moments that we remember, and it is not those moments that we treasure. They are not rich with meaning. Fleeting, easy satisfaction does not a meaningful life make. [...] Consider how you know about speed, for instance. When driving on a warm Spring day with the windows open, you can understand how fast you are going by feeling the wind in and around the car; by recognizing the road’s surface and cant and your car’s responsiveness to it; by observing other vehicles and how they are moving, and how they respond to you. Or you can read the number on the speedometer. The first provides an understanding of speed that is embodied and holistic; the second way of knowing how fast you are going, in contrast, is a much thinner kind of knowledge. That number that you glean from a glance at the speedometer tells you something, but it is both far less meaningful than having an embodied sense of speed, and far easier to communicate when you get pulled over.”

“A surface desire is one that conflicts with our Knowing. We must ask our surface desires: What is the desire beneath this desire? Is it rest? Is it peace? Our deep desires are wise, true, beautiful, and things we can grant ourselves without abandoning our Knowing. Following our deep desire always returns us to integrity. If your desire feels wrong to you: Go deeper.”

“When somebody is massaging your head, you will notice that they tend to leave one spot untouched. You will say, “Why are you leaving the spot where it is itching the most?” The truth is, that spot is itching the most because it is being left out. “Why am I not getting the thing I want the most?” should be rephrased as “I am itching to get this thing because I am not getting it.” The power of a desire lies in the difficulty to fulfil it.”

“Millions of business people are each constantly forced to choose between their desire to not be a bad person and their desire to be a good business person, that is to say, to make as much money as they possibly can by maximizing their revenue while minimizing the cost of producing whatever it is that they sell.”

“What do you do if you've got everything? There's only one thing you can do. More.”

“A poem can't free us from the struggle for existence, but it can uncover desires and appetites buried under the accumulating emergencies of our lives, the fabricated wants and needs we have had urged on us, have accepted as our own. It's not a philosophical or psychological blueprint; it's an instrument for embodied experience.”