This emotion may range from a mild wanting to an obsessive, driven craving for something or someone. It is also expressed as greed, obsession, hunger, envy, jealousy, clinging, hoarding, ruthlessness, fixation, frenzy, exaggeration, over-ambition, selfishness, lust, possessiveness, control, glamorization, insatiability, and acquisitiveness. “Never satisfied.” “Never enough.” “Must have.” The underlying quality of this emotion is its drivenness. When we are at the effect of desire, we are no longer free. We are controlled by it, run by it, enslaved and led about by the nose by it.
Here again, the essential point of freedom is whether we have chosen consciously to fulfill a certain want, or whether we are just being blindly run by unconscious programs and belief systems.
There is often a lack of understanding of the function of wanting and desire. The main illusion is seen in the statement, “The only way that I’ll get what I want is by desiring it; if I let go of my desire, then I won’t get what I want.” Actually, the opposite is true. Desire, especially strong desire (e.g., cravingness), frequently blocks our getting what we want.
Why is this so? Actually, the way something comes into our life is because we have chosen it. It was the result of our intention, or we made a decision for it. It has come into our life in spite of desire. The desiring was actually the obstacle to its achievement or acquisition. This is because desire literally means, “I do not have.” In other words, if we say that we desire something, we are saying that it isn’t ours. When we say that it isn’t ours, we put a psychic distance between ourselves and what we want. This distance becomes the obstacle that consumes energy.
The impossible becomes possible as soon as we are totally surrendered. This is because wanting blocks receiving it and results in a fear of not getting it. The energy of desire is, in essence, a denial that what we want is ours for the asking.
This is a different way of looking at achieving goals than the one we are used to from the programming of our world. We are used to picturing ambition and success as being associated with hard work and the classical “Protestant ethic” virtues. These include self-sacrifice, asceticism, great expenditure of effort and endeavor, keeping our nose to the grindstone, tightening our belt, buckling down, and all the grimness of hard work. When we look at this whole picture, it sounds arduous, doesn’t it? Well, it is. It involves struggle, and the struggle results from the block we have put in our own way because of desire.
Let’s compare the arduous lower consciousness way of achieving goals with a higher state of consciousness in which we have acknowledged and let go of the desire, and are in a freer state. In a freer state, that which is chosen manifests in our life effortlessly. We surrender the emotion of desire and, instead, merely choose the goal, picture it lovingly, and allow it to happen because we see that it is already ours.
Why is it already ours? In a lower state of consciousness, the universe is seen as negative and denying, frustrating, and reluctant. It is like a bad, stingy parent. In a higher state of consciousness, our experience of the universe changes. It now becomes like a giving, loving, unconditionally approving parent who wants us to have everything we want, and it is ours for the asking. This is creating a different context. It is giving the universe a different meaning.
Although the world may be stingy and hostile to other people, there is no reason why we should buy into this paradigm. When we buy into it, we make it that way in our own life. As we experience the letting go of desires, we begin to see that what we have chosen will come into our life almost magically. “What we hold in mind tends to manifest.” As was said before, during times of supposed high unemployment, some people are not only employed but have two or three jobs.
This was a shockingly new way of looking at the world when it was first encountered. There was the hope that it was true, but also a skepticism that said, “This just isn’t possible on a pragmatic level.” A strict “Protestant ethic” background made it hard to believe; nonetheless, the willingness was there to be open-minded enough to give it a try. Here was the initial experience with letting go of desire.
Personal goals were written down, followed by a letting go of the desire for them. It sounds paradoxical but that is the process: identify the goals and then let go of wanting them. One goal that had been held in mind for several years was an apartment in New York City, because work commitments required a lot of commuting and money spent on hotel rooms. A small apartment in the city—a so-called pied-à-terre—would be the economical solution. “Apartment in New York City” was written down as a goal. When utilizing this way of achieving goals, we include all of the details, as impossible as they may seem to the rational mind to achieve. So, the ideal apartment was detailed: reasonably priced, on Fifth Avenue in the 70s block, right next to an entrance to Central Park, at least eight or nine floors up and in the rear so that the street noise would be minimized, and not any bigger than about two and a half rooms.
The next day at work, it was busy as usual, with a big caseload, meetings, and patient visits. In between the meetings and patients, the feeling of wantingness for the apartment would be acknowledged and let go. And, as the day progressed, the apartment was actually forgotten. At 4:30 P.M., after the last patient, there was suddenly the impulse to drive into the city. Despite the fact that it was ostensibly rush hour, the road was clear and the drive took only half an hour. The car cruised to about 73rd and Lexington, pulling up to the nearest real estate office. Rather magically, there happened to be a parking space open right in front of the real estate office. The real estate officer, upon hearing the tongue-in-cheek announcement that an apartment on Fifth Avenue was desired, looked with surprise and said, “Well, you are certainly in luck! Exactly one hour ago we listed the only apartment for rent on all of Fifth Avenue, at 76th Street, on the ninth floor. It’s the rear apartment, two and a half rooms, and the rent is reasonable (rent-controlled at $500.00 a month). It has just been painted and you can move in any time.” So we walked over and viewed the apartment. It fit the description of the goal exactly. The lease was signed on the spot! Thus, within 24 hours of trying the letting go technique on a specific personal goal, the goal was a reality. It had been something that was almost impossible to find, and yet it happened exactly as pictured, effortlessly, and with no negative emotions. It was an easy and joyous experience.
This is not an unusual experience but a typical one, because in this case the desire was moderate and could, without much effort, be totally surrendered. By being totally surrendered, this means that it was okay if the apartment happened, and it was okay if it didn’t. Because of being totally surrendered, the impossible became possible, manifesting itself effortlessly and rapidly.
We can all doubt this mechanism and look back at things that we wanted and that were achieved through ambition, desire, craving, and even obsessive, frenzied wanting. The mind says, “Well, what if I had let go of the desire for those things? If it weren’t for the desire, how would I have gotten them?” The truth is, we could have gotten them anyway, only without anxiety (fear of not getting), without all the energy expenditure, without all the effort, without all the trial and error, and without all the hard work.
“Well!” the mind says, “if we got it effortlessly, how about the pride of achievement? Wouldn’t we have to sacrifice that?” Well, yes, we would have to relinquish the vanity of all that sacrifice and hard work that we put into it. We would have to give up the sentimentality about the self-sacrifice and all the pain and suffering we went through to achieve our goals. This is a peculiar perversion in our society, isn’t it? If we suddenly become successful almost effortlessly, then people are envious. It really annoys them that we didn’t have to go through all kinds of anguish, pain, and suffering to get there. Their mind believes that such anguish is the cost that must be paid for success.
Let’s look at this belief. If it weren’t for the negative programming that made us believe otherwise, why should we go through any cost of pain and suffering to achieve anything in our life? Isn’t that a rather sadistic view of the world and the universe?
Other blocks to the achievement of our wants and desires, of course, are unconscious guilt and smallness. Peculiarly, the unconscious will allow us to have only what we think we deserve. The more we hang on to our negativity and the small self-image that results, the less we think we deserve, and we unconsciously deny ourselves the abundance which flows so easily to others. That is the reason for the saying, “The poor get poorer and the rich get richer.” If we have a small view of ourselves, then what we deserve is poverty, and our unconscious will see to it that we have that actuality. As we relinquish our smallness and revalidate our own inner innocence, and as we let go of resisting our generosity, openness, trust, lovingness, and faith, then the unconscious will automatically start arranging life circumstances so that abundance begins to flow into our life.
As we free ourselves out of lower states of consciousness such as apathy and fear, we come into wantingness. What was formerly an “I can’t” and impossible now becomes possible. The general progression of the levels of consciousness, as we go from the lowest to the highest, is to move from havingness to doingness to beingness. At the lower levels of consciousness, it is what we have that counts. It is what we have that we want. It is what we have that we value. It is what we have that gives us our self-image of worth and position in the world.
Once we have proven to ourselves that we can have, that our basic needs can be fulfilled, that we have the power to provide for our own needs and those of others who are dependent upon us, the mind begins to become more interested in what it is that we do. Then, we move to a different social set in which what we do in the world is the basis of our value and how others rate us. As we move up in lovingness, our doingness is less and less preoccupied with self-service and becomes more and more oriented to being of service to others. As our consciousness grows, we see that service, which is lovingly oriented toward others, automatically results in the fulfillment of our own needs. (This does not mean sacrifice. Service is not sacrifice.) Eventually, we become convinced that our own needs are automatically fulfilled by the universe, and our actions become almost automatically loving.
At that point, it is no longer what we do in the world but what we are that counts. We have proven to ourselves that we can have what we need, that we can do almost anything, given the willingness. And now what we are, within ourselves and to others, becomes most important. People now seek our company, not because of what we have, not because of what we do and society’s labels, but because of what we have become. Because of the quality of our presence, people just want to be around us and experience us. Our social description changes. We are no longer the person who has a fashionable apartment or big car or a bric-a-brac collection, nor are we labeled as the President of the So-and-So Corporation or a member of the Board of Directors of some organization. Now we are described as a splendid person, as somebody whom people just have to meet, just have to know. We become described as a charismatic person.
This level of beingness is typical of self-help groups. In self-help groups, no one is interested in what others do in the world or what they have. They are only interested in whether or not we have achieved certain inner goals, such as those of honesty, openness, sharingness, lovingness, willingness to help, humility, genuineness, and awareness. They are interested in our quality of beingness.
Glamour is a very useful subject to understand. Once we understand it, it greatly facilitates the letting go of desires. The book called Glamour: A World Problem (1950), by Alice Bailey, presents the whole subject expertly.
If we look at something that we want, we can begin to distinguish between the thing itself versus the aura, patina, flash, and attractive magnetic effect of a quality that can best be described as “glamour.” It is this disparity between what a thing is in itself, and the glamour that we have attached to it, which leads to disillusionment. So often we have chased some goal and, then, when we have achieved it, we are disappointed. That is because the thing itself does not coincide with our pictures of it. Glamour means that we have attached sentimentality or we have made it bigger than life. We have projected onto a thing a magical quality that somehow leads us to believe that, once we acquire it, we will magically achieve some higher state of happiness and satisfaction.
This happens very often with vocational goals. The man works year after year striving to become president of the company or become important and prominent in some other way. When he gets there, he expects to experience all the satisfaction and the glamour associated with that level of achievement: the kowtowing by employees, the flashy cars, the prominent office, the labels, the titles, and the exclusive addresses. But what he finds is that all of these things are superficial. They are very inadequate compensation for the agonizing energy drain and daily grind that, in reality, the position necessitates. While he pictured that he would get admiration, what he often finds at the top levels is viciousness, competitiveness, envy, and the endless fawning and dishonest manipulations that occur to people in power, including the paranoid attacks by competitors. He finds that his energy is so drained that he has no energy left over for his personal life; his relationships are impaired. His wife complains that he is too exhausted to make love, too depleted to give her the energy she needs, too worn-out to be a good father, and too tired even to enjoy a favorite recreational activity.
The same thing occurs with women in the traditionally feminine areas of achievement. A woman thinks, for instance, if she gets a certain designer dress for the party that the dress is going to bring her attention, adulation, and admiration, and that it will win her a certain social status. With much sacrifice, she spends a great deal of money and effort on the dress, running back and forth for fittings. But what happens? At the dinner party, there are a few passing comments on her dress and that’s the end of it. Nobody dances with her any more than usual. She is not more prominent than she was before the party. No more genuine attention is paid to her than previously. She gets some hostile, envious looks from other women who recognize what she probably paid for the dress. During the evening, she has the usual argument with her escort, and they go home in the car barely speaking to each other, the same as in the past.
As women make gains in the corporate and political arenas, they face the disappointment that accompanies longed-for, glamorized leadership roles in the public. What was predicted to enhance prestige and esteem instead brings criticism, envy, and hostility—even from other women. The experience of achieving their goal is often not what they thought it was going to be. There is endless judgment of a woman’s public persona and dress, and she may have the gnawing feeling of inner worry that she has failed her family by going for professional fulfillment. “Winning” is sometimes not as liberating as glamour would want us to believe.
Emotional goals are also glamorized by sentimentality and emotionalism. A certain excitement is projected onto the emotional event (e.g., a reunion, a first date, or being elected president of one’s class). It is made to seem more important than it really is in the overall course of events. After the event passes, life goes on the same and disappointment ensues.
Glamorization, of course, is starkly obvious in advertising. Here we see it sui generis. The cowboy is the glamorization of masculinity, and the ballet dancer is the glamorization of femininity. Men are attracted by personality, not the brand; thus, the cowboy represents the glamorized male who is rugged, cool, suave, and in control. The consumer projects onto the product that it will give him those desired personality traits.
Glamorization is living at a fantasy level. Therefore, when we proceed to let go of a desire, we must dissect away that which is exaggeration, fantasy, and romanticization. Once we have relinquished the glamour, it will be relatively easy to surrender the desire itself. If you let go of the romanticization of the cowboy, for example, then the cigarette or the cheeseburger that he was handling in the commercial will lose its appeal. In fact, much to our surprise, we will find over and over again that the desire was attached to the glamorous fantasy; there was no reality in it in the first place. Because there was no reality in it, the world is constantly selling us dishonesty, catering to our desire for that romantic, glamorized aspect. It promises to make us more important than we really are. Glamour at that level of dishonesty is a fake.
The mind protests: “Do I have to give up all that glamorous excitement? Do I have to let go of my pictures of emotional gratification and excitement?” The answer is obviously “No.” We don’t have to give them up at all. And we can achieve the goals effortlessly and easily once we are conscious of what we are choosing. We can have them directly. We can be attractive, but we won’t get it in a fake way such as driving a certain style of car. We will get it by letting go of our smallness and owning our greatness, thereby reflecting it out into the world. We can easily become that exciting person whom people are eager to know. Just choose to be that person and let go of the block of desiring to be that way. We can have what we want directly without detouring through some fraudulent promise that will lead us into frustration and disappointment.
The way to become that exciting person whom people want to know is very easy. We simply picture the kind of person we want to be and surrender all the negative feelings and blocks that prevent us from being that. What happens, then, is that all we need to have and to do will automatically fall into place. This is because, in contrast to having and doing, the level of being has the most power and energy. When it is given priority, it automatically integrates and organizes one’s activities. This mechanism is evidenced in the common experience, “What we hold in mind tends to manifest.”
These are not philosophical positions but practical processes that can be proven through experience. It is easy to experiment with these concepts and watch the automatic results take place. Because of the mind’s tendency to want to attribute credit elsewhere, other than to the power of our own consciousness, it is good to keep a diary to write down goals that we would really like to achieve and then check them off and make follow-up notes. Why? Because it will take a while before we believe that it is truly our own power that is accomplishing these ends.
Here is an interesting example of the denial of inner power. A man, who was desperate for a job and pretty frantic about it, was instructed on how to apply the letting go technique to his job situation. Because he was of a religious nature, he was advised to forget about getting a job, to turn it over to God, and to surrender his desire in the matter while staying open to what might happen. A week later, he recounted: “Well, the day after I surrendered wanting a job, nothing happened. Then I got a long-distance phone call from my brother-in-law, and I am going to be joining his firm. If it weren’t for my brother-in-law, I never would have gotten a job. It’s a good thing I didn’t wait for God!”
This is a good example of what the mind has a tendency to do. It was his own surrender, of course, that brought in the call from his brother-in-law. He so frantically desired the job that the desire was blocking the fulfillment of that goal. When he let go of wanting a job, it quickly appeared within 24 hours. But the propensity of the mind is to disown one’s own power and project it elsewhere onto the world. This is why people in their own estimation think they are powerless. They have the power, but they have merely projected it onto external forces. We are all powerful beings who have become unconscious of our own power; we have denied and projected it onto others out of guilt and our own sense of smallness.
The majority of what happens in our lifetime is the result of some decision we have made somewhere in the past, either consciously or unconsciously. Because this is so, it is very simple, then, to see our past decisions by looking at our life and tracking backwards.
This principle is demonstrated by a woman who came for psychotherapy. She needed treatment because, in her words, “My relationships never work out.” She had one unsatisfactory love affair after another and was always left feeling used and abused. She was full of resentment, self-pity, and depression. The problem, of course, was given in her opening sentence, “My relationships never work out.”
Because we deny the power of our own mind, we don’t see the glaringly obvious. It is very curious how we have become so unaware. Here is a woman who has the answer sitting right there, but she does not see that it is the answer. She really doesn’t see the power of her own belief system. Our mind is so powerful that, if we hold in mind a single thought such as, “My relationships never work out,” then that is most likely going to happen in our life. Our unconscious genie, which can only take orders and not make decisions, sees to it that our relationships don’t work out.
Of course, she got a lot of payoffs from her disappointing relationship history. She got to experience self-pity, resentment, jealousy, envy, and all those gratifications that the small self feeds on endlessly. If we look at the small part of ourselves, we will see that this is the kind of thing in which it just loves to wallow. The small self glorifies in how miserable life is, how tough luck is, how rotten our experiences have been and how mean people have been to us. But we pay a big price when we listen to this set of programs.
The corollary is obviously true. If our mind, by its decision, has the power to make negative things happen in our life, then it has equal power in the opposite, positive direction. We can choose all over again. This time we can choose the positive. We can cancel the old programs, and we can do that by beginning to relinquish the gratification we were getting out of the negative payoffs.
Now that we have looked at the subject a bit, we can come up with the term that most aptly describes this set of emotions: “selfishness.” The mere use of the word instantly sets up a resistance due to guilt. We all feel guilty because of selfishness. This puts us in an impossible position because, in order to carry out what the world has taught us, we have to indulge in the very thing for which it then condemns us: selfishness. To look at the subject, let’s first make a decision that we are not going to beat ourselves up about it and get into the self-indulgence of guilt. That’s what guilt is, really, isn’t it? Self-indulgence.
Instead, let’s look at the term “selfishness” as merely describing the collective motivations and modes of operation of the small self that is a genetic aspect of the mind which, due to our own naïveté, we allowed ourselves to be programmed with, and which we are now resolved to de-program in reverse, like the “uninstall” command on a computer.
The reason to let go of selfishness is not because of guilt. Not because it’s a “sin.” Not because it’s “wrong.” All such motivations come from lower consciousness and self-judgment. Rather, the reason to let go of selfishness is simply because it is impractical. It doesn’t work. It’s too costly. It consumes too much energy. It delays the accomplishment of our goals and the realization of our wants. Because of its very nature, the small self is the creator of guilt and its self-perpetuator; that is, out of guilt we strive to accomplish and achieve success. Then, when we achieve success, we feel guilty because we have it. There is no winning of the guilt game. The only solution is to give it up, to let it go.
Our mind would like to make us think that guilt is laudatory, and the guilt-mongers of the world love to make an idol of it. Which is more important: to feel guilty or to change for the better? If somebody owes us money, would we rather they feel guilty about it or pay us the money? If we intend to feel guilty, we should at least consciously choose it instead of being unwittingly run by it.
When we move from being selfish with a small “s,” we move into being Selfish with a capital “S.” We move from our smaller self to our greater Self. We move from weakness to power, and from self-hatred and pettiness to lovingness and harmony. We move from strife to ease, and from frustration to accomplishment.
In summation, then, instead of the motivation of selfishness and desire, we can much more effortlessly bring into our life that which we want by envisioning what we wish to have happen. We do this by declaration of our intention, by acceptance, by decision, and by the act of consciously choosing.