Science of Reality: Fulfillment of Desire
In this post, everything comes from Deepak Chopra. The fourth lesson in Chopra’s “The Nature of Reality” series is called “Fulfillment of Desire.” It explores the next phase by connecting the previous lessons and how understanding the concepts can change our experience of life.
That which we call the objective world, including our body, is an interpretation of experiences and all experiences are generated in consciousness, known in consciousness, occur in consciousness, disappear into consciousness, and are made out of consciousness.
That consciousness is infinite, dimensionless, zero dimensions, infinite dimensions. It is the ground of all creation and every observed object, every mode of observation, and every species-specific experience. Consciousness is the only reality. So how can you practice that?
The first thing you have to do is disengage from the idea of an identity which is provisional. My identity as a person is a changing form, a process. My entity as an ego body mind having the experiences in the universe is provisional, meaning, relative, having no permanence, ephemeral, illusory, dreamlike.
When you are having an experience, ask yourself, “Am I aware?” Take yourself out of the experience and observe it instead. This is the beginning of enlightenment, the path to the first principal of self: Know Thyself.
If you don’t know yourself, you can’t know anything else. This is called self-realization. You have to give up your compulsion to label things, define them, and create meaning out of them. It’s all a projection of yourself.
Have awareness of the awareness. Have the awareness of yourself, not as the mind but as the observer of the mind.
Just be a silent witness. Then, within that stillness, ask: “What do I want? Who am I? What is my purpose? How do I serve? How do I do what I do? What am I grateful for?” Can any finite desire fulfill you? No, because all finite desires come and go, followed by other desires. Don’t chase the answers. Live the questions and life will move you into the answers. You will begin to have synchronicity. You will start to experience meaningful coincidences. You will start to be at the right place at the right time.
The answers to all these questions actually come to self-realization. This leads to desires usually symbolized as chakras:
- survival, safety, sexuality
- achievement and success (this is human-specific), the fulfillment of goals
- love and the sense of belonging
- true self esteem and knowing yourself as the source of all existence
- creative expression, knowing yourself as a spontaneous creator, that in every moment you are creating the experience and therefore are creating the world
- archetypal higher response, higher consciousness
- unity consciousness, enlightenment, self-actualization, self-realization
Deepak Chopra’s answers to the questions . . .
- Who am I? I am an infinite being having finite experiences.
- What do I want? Self-realization, to know thyself in every experience, to know that I am creating these experiences and therefore have a choice.
- What is my purpose? To not be bamboozled by form and phenomena which is my own creation. My true purpose is to be an infinite spontaneous creator.
- What am I grateful for? I am grateful for existence, both eternal and ephemeral.
Find your answers to the questions, then observe the sensations, feelings, and thoughts, and, finally, let them go. This is seeding the consciousness with “what do I want?” Then ask yourself, why? Why do I want this? Then asking what you are grateful for leads to abundance consciousness. Reflection and letting go leads to transcendence which is just being, doing nothing.
Desires cannot be ignored—they can only be fulfilled or they can be transcended. What is desire? Desire is a fundamental aspect of consciousness which takes potential and makes it into what we call the actual. But the potential is the real reality and what we call the actual is simply the current dream.
Desire is pure potentiality seeking manifestation. It is an inherent property of consciousness as it moves from the unmanifest to the manifest, from the invisible to the visible, from the spiritual into the material.