Ep.04 ~ Desire and Willfulness

“Most of everything we do in life is designed to shine us up a little bit, so people will like us and look at us and appreciate us more and we get some attention, some affection. You know? But we don’t have to shine. We really don’t have to. So, if you’re noticing all the ways you’re trying to shine, that’s good. Otherwise how can you let go of that stuff if you don’t notice? Right? It’s not going to help you get happy. You’re just going to spend a lot of time shining yourself up. Then you fall apart.” – Krishna Das

Transcription:

Q: I’m wondering if you can speak to the differentiation between going after what you want, desire and like a willfulness.

KD: You need will, you know? Will is what moves you. It directs your energy. Without will, you know, where does it go? What do you do? Whether it’s, you’re trying to direct your attention, that’s also your will. I remember, I’ve told this many times, but when I was in the jungle with this old Baba who was 163 at the time, he said to me one day, he looked at me and said, “Hm. You have to develop willpower.” And my first thought was, “Willpower? What do I need that for?” And then he kind of went like, like he saw my thought, so He did something and He showed me inside of myself, what He was seeing and it was pretty intense. I saw that I was not, I was putting chains around my ankles, you know? I was not going after the things I wanted in life, and I was all justifying it with, “well, I don’t need that. I don’t need this.”  You know, all this kind of stuff. But I really wanted things that I wasn’t going after.  Things I wanted. And I saw that I had this kind of funny thing like that there was spiritual life and worldly life and that you could live a spiritual life and you didn’t have to, you know. But I was in the world. There was only one life, mine, right? And if I wasn’t going to live it, who was going to live it? I was not going after the things I wanted. I wasn’t living fully. And that was a big moment for me. Willfulness, by that I mean, I take it to mean inappropriate selfish craving of something. But not, go ahead

Q: Yeah perhaps, but do you think it’s possible to experience that kind of want and desire in a positive way and at the same time have that craving and wanting. So there’s two things happening.

KD: Ok, let’s do this again. So, you have a desire for something and, which is called craving. Desire is craving. The issue is it going to hurt you or somebody else. That’s the only real issue I can see. If it’s a desire to drink a bottle of poison because it might taste good, I don’t think that’s good.

Q: I think, can I elaborate?

KD: Please.

Q: So, like, if I want something in my life, if I have a goal or an aspiration for something that’s important, but then when I find that I’m pursuing it, that I get caught up in wanting it to turn out a certain way or I get caught up in what people think of me or how good I am in the face of someone else.

KD: Well, first of all, one thing is why do you want it? Do you want people to think a certain way about you? You’re trying to get something so that people will appreciate and look at you a certain kind of way? If that’s your motivation, hm, that’s what’ll happen. But the other part of it is that you know, as far as the fruits of our actions, we have no control over that, all we can do is do what we do, and whatever comes to us, comes to us. We can’t guarantee success in anything and we can’t guarantee failure. Well, we can guarantee failure by not going after what we want. So it was my fear of failure that was keeping me from going after the things I wanted. And when I noticed that, I was able to overcome that to some degree. But yeah that’s good, being aware of all that stuff that happens to you on the way to getting something is very good. Is that a reason to not go after it anymore? Not necessarily. It’s like it’s doing good,