How To Be Free From Desires

Sat: The question I would like to ask and I hope everybody participates is, “What is it to be free of desire that drags you down? How do you free yourself of desires?”
Kavi: I can’t say I’m desireless, but for me, it’s based on certain practices, and contemplation has helped me the most, by asking “Am I this or that?” Seeing those opposites helped. And as we got farther, asking myself “Where did this desire come from?”, finding its root and keep going back to absolute nothingness. And finally asking “who desires?” It’s Kavi. “What is that bundle of shenanigans? What is Kavi?”, and seeing that dissolve into nothing. So, contemplation was the most helpful for me.
Sat: It always is.
Nilu: Actually for me, contemplation in the way of asking “Is that really important? For whom, for what?” Yes, it does help.
Sat: Your contemplation does not take you to the roots. it just convinces you that it was not important. That is not contemplation. That's a choice. That’s being intelligent. But what he is saying is different. He is really going to the bottom of who is desiring, and what is the thought of the desire, just zooming in instead of making a choice. It’s better to be intelligent than not to be, but it won’t go far.
For Me, to be free from desire means to be free from the mind. You can’t separate the identification with the mind and not having desires. Like the fabric and the dress, they cannot be separated. “Be free from desire that drags you down” really means to inquire and release yourself of the chain or being a puppet.
“Have only yearning to come face to face with the Truth.” What is Truth? What Truth is He talking about? When the false is gone, you are face to face with the Truth! That’s the only time we are face to face with Truth, when at that moment we are not with the false. That’s it! I think if we look at every sentence in a more panoramic way of looking rather than word by word, we can understand it better.
Every thought is painful, even the most benign thought takes you away from your silence. That is the least … Like some of you said that most of us in this room came to this place out of pain and misery, we had had enough of being enslaved…most people!
Aida asks Sat to clarify Her meaning regarding the benign thoughts.
Sat: You’re just watching a very innocent movie in your head. There is nothing wrong with following it; then it turns out that the very last part of the movie becomes very, very violent. It becomes very dramatic, you say to yourself “wait a minute, I started so softly, I was watching a good movie and then it turned into a chaotic movie.” Daydreaming is always about ‘me’ in our imagination-always, about that entity, the entity talked to this one [entity] … it did really good … the entity did this … etc. Because the person is not separated from the mind, so they sort of enjoy it.
Here it goes to 3.15.22 USA chat
Sepideh shares about how she had a set of older crystal glasses and one of them got chipped. She goes searching online and is unable to find the match, and comes to find out she had been looking it up under the wrong name. She gets frustrated and hence aware of this desire to find them. She lets go yet was still aware of the desire. She finally finds them online. The next day at Sai center she hears Sat’s replies to both Kavi and Nilu regarding dealing with desires. She compares her own process with replacing the glasses to how Sat addressed both differently at Sai Center. She says “I was wondering what happened to me!”
Sat: Well, that’s a good question, what happened to you? (Laughs)
Sepideh: Sat, I don’t know, I gave up the frustration and I was aware of my desire.
Sat: You see, again, there is a different level. There is a level for the diver that goes ten centimeters under the water and then decides to go two feet, then maybe he decides to go ten, twenty or a hundred feet. When you see your frustration and you are uncomfortable, and you say “Let it go!” That letting go is just saying, “I can’t stand being frustrated.” You are not understanding the depth of what is meant by not desiring. In order to eliminate little by little, even having a desire, let alone getting frustrated and letting go of it, is to realize everything is temporary and nothing is worth polluting the peace and shaking the equanimity!
Now, when you question the mind, the question for the thinker of being attracted through the attention to that thought, then you are eliminating it not from ten millimeters under the water, but you are having a very deep understanding of what the nature of desire is! You realize that the desire’s home is in the mind, it is not in the heart, that no desire has ever been permanent, etc.
So, what happens is that the thinker begins to lose interest, not that you let go, it is through understanding, through a deep understanding. Like I said to Nilu, it was very intelligent to see your frustration and let it go. But it is not permanent, permanent comes from contemplation, self-inquiry and a deep understanding of who you are not. So that’s that!
It is really astonishing and also very heartwarming to know that none of us who embrace what is being happening; Me, you, he, she, they, I am including Myself, that there is a force that doesn’t allow us to be in midair and to be satisfied with a little bit of knowledge, a little bit of understanding. And there is an undying grace that is constantly pointing us to a mountain that has no peak, it is so high, over and over and over.
I have been going through this training for the past 45-50 years. So, we are blessed, we have grace, there is this invisible Existence that keeps saying “don’t put your tent there … don’t be so excited about it … let Me show you something that is much better, much deeper, much happier, much freer, much more permanent!” And I feel privileged to be a part of that, as each of you are. What we are doing is not ordinary. What we are guided towards is not an everyday life. It surpasses understanding, the intellectual understanding, the reasoning understanding, the so-called “normal" understanding!

Reno Center & USA Chat
How To Be Free From Desires?
March 13&15, 2022