Will Life Be Boring If One Has No Desires?

“If I had no desires,” asked a congregation member, “wouldn’t I lose all motivation, and become a sort of automaton?”

“Many people imagine so,” Yogananda replied. “They think they’d have no further interest in life. But that isn’t what happens at all. Rather, you would find life to be infinitely more interesting.”

“Consider the negative aspect of desire. It keeps you forever fearful. ‘What if this happens?’ you think; or ‘What if that doesn’t happen?’ You live in a state of anxiety for the future, or of regret for the past.

“Non-attachment, on the other hand, helps you to live perpetually in a state of inner freedom and happiness. When you can be happy in the present, then you have God.

“Desirelessness doesn’t rob you of motivation. Far from it! The more you live in God, the deeper the joy you experience in serving Him.”

Go to God

“Go to God, and all the problems that lie buried within the soil of your consciousness will be swept away in a single stroke.

“The caverns of many lives lie buried in your mental soil. All the desires you’ve ever had in the past are stored in them, waiting to attract you to material things.

“But if you go back to God, you will be able to satisfy all those desires forever in His bliss.”

Be Ever Happy Inside

“Objective conditions are always neutral. It is how you react to them that makes them appear sad or happy.

“Work on yourself: on your reactions to outer circumstances. This is the essence of yoga: to neutralize the waves of reaction in the heart. Be ever happy inside. You will never be able to change things outwardly in such a way as to make them ever pleasing to you.

“Change yourself.”

Excerpted from The Essence of Self-Realization: The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda

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