Desires - a Hindrance to Liberation

 

Photo Credit: Yeshye Rabgye

Desires - a Hindrance to Liberation

It is said that for a human being to have the following three things at the same time is very rare – a healthy human body, a desire for moksha and a Guru to show you the way. All these three elements come together to a very few select people in their lifetime. And when this confluence does take place, then know that it is time to become liberated.

Each soul knows this deep down, but the vagaries of living one’s material life buries it to the extent that the soul’s voice gets muted and ultimately dies down. When the time is right, and life’s lessons are learnt then the above confluence of three occurs. We have a healthy physical body (Swamiji keeps telling us to exercise regularly), the desire for liberation awakens within us (we meet our Master – in our case His Holiness Shivkrupanand Swami), and He tells us to meditate and now He is telling us to love selflessly to attain that state of being that is called moksha. Both meditation and loving selflessly lead you on to the path of liberation.

We all have done a lot of meritorious deeds in our life, and some of us have also done deeds which we are not too proud of! But all these were done when we did not know better – all done in a state of ignorance about our real purpose in life! But once we have learnt our true purpose – liberation – then the whole approach of the Universe changes towards us. Now, we have to be extremely careful to ensure that meritorious deeds do not get attached to us and we do not perform any bad deeds!

The way to ensure that meritorious deeds do not get attached to us is by ensuring that whatever we do, we do so selflessly and surrender the fruits of those deeds to the Guru-energies with the feeling that they have done the deeds and we were just their mediums. When we have a Master in our lives, when we meditate regularly, live healthily, then there is no way we can do any bad deeds. The energy, the vibrations which emanate from our body ensure that we are protected from people or circumstances which have a negative effect.

Whether we believe in reincarnation or not, it’s a fact, this is now being scientifically proved too – many studies are on and there are many people who can distinctly recall their past births. Our soul has travelled a long way, we are almost at the end of our journey – from seed to animal, animal to human, human to superhuman. Unconscious to subconscious to conscious to superconscious!

Swamiji recently narrated the story of two sadhaks who had more or less attained the state of liberation, but due to some very silly desires at the time of their death they will be reborn – one for the desire for ice-cream and the other for a potato burger! The Gita says that our desires become very intense just at the time of leaving the body – whatever is submerged deep in our subconscious comes gushing to the surface, this is because at the very last minute our mind and body, in fact everything about us is weak.

So, if we really want to merge with universal consciousness, then ensure that we empty ourselves completely, fulfill all the desires we have, tick all items on our bucket list (if we have one) and ensure that our mind is free and light and totally void during our final moments, totally devoid of desires – then rest assured He will ensure that we don’t come back!