For Jody :: Desire <> Love <> Holy Desire

My Divine Beloved Meher Baba, in my recent communication and work with Jody, I have come to realize that there are important words that need to be explored and defined so that we can continue to be of service in this work for Truth. There are three forces, that I have come to feel are central to the spiritual process, as follows: desire, love, and holy-desire.

Desire means the wants, desires, cravings of the ego, or limited self, such as "I want a boyfriend, I want ice-cream, I want that new BMW Roadster sports car, etc." These are not needs, but simply desires. Desires, by my definition, do not usually bring one closer to the Truth, but rather get one more entangled with the world, and illusions of happiness. Usually desire seeks to answer the question, "What will make me happy?" Since I have written about the differences between desires and needs elsewhere, I am trusting that we can clearly differentiate those two without more here. Suffice it to say that fulfillment of this type of desire most often leads to further binding, further craving, more wanting and more desire, because the object of the desire fails to give the expected happiness. To me, this is a state of falsity and separation in illusion.

Then we have love. There are many definitions, and poems, about the meaning of love. In the West in particular, there are some perceived confusions about what love is. We have a tendency in the West to cast love into the role of being a noun, a cherished feeling that one has with special people at special times. That is not the type of love I am speaking about. I once read, "Love is a verb." This is where I want to go with love, towards active loving that is transformative. This active love may be experienced by others as a passive "love" feeling, as being loved, but to me it is important that love is activated. Based on over twenty years with Meher Baba, I have come to see love as trying to make others happy, to uplift them in some way, and that type of active love is usually operational when one is not thinking of oneself, but putting another (or others) first, focusing on their happiness. This active love also has greater and higher manifestations. That we can discuss later, but to foreshadow its presence we can think about Divine Love, and aspects of human love such as obedience to our Spiritual Master, and surrender to God or the Master as an extraordinarily potent forms of love.

Then there are holy desires. A holy desire is a desire that brings one closer to Truth, God, Reality, Oneness and leads away from illusion, separateness, and falsity. Good examples of holy desires are: I want to see God, I want to please God, I want to be an instrument of God's Grace in the world, I want to work for God, I want to become One with God, etc. These holy desires are still in the phase of the human that feels separate from God, and therefore the ego, I, is present, but the fulfillment of the holy desire leads to self-effacement in the reality of the Holy One.

To come to terms with desires, love and holy desires on the spiritual path is no small feat. I am confident that we can work together to bring more clarity to all of these forces that are so present within the human psyche, to regard them as vital forces that all have their proper place.

Om. 

In Oneness,

Laurent