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Ceiling of Desires
| “A human being is a part of the whole, called by us `Universe-, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. |
| Einstein, the great scientist realized that as long as man is imprisoned in his own personal desires he cannot identify himself as a part of the whole Universe and will never be able to experience true freedom, or “Liberation”. |
| Too much and excessive desires are stumbling blocks in the path of Light. |
| It is not incorrect to have desires, but it is greed that drives man to perform wrong deeds, sin and commit crimes. There are many ways to eliminate sin in one's life .One of the very important ways is to first seek happiness and satisfaction in what one already has. In that case this satisfaction or gratitude will create fewer agitations in the mind; when this happens one will experience happiness and peace of mind. If one, in order to please the mind just goes on doing actions that the mind generates without control many wrong acts would be performed. In doing so the doer will neither have happiness nor peace in this life but also in the next life as well. Hence it's very important for each to have a ceiling on desires. |
| It is often believed that the world is binding us, but the world is lifeless. |
| Most of our problems stem from our unrequited or thwarted desires which give rise to all our negative emotions such as greed, envy, jealousy, anger, hatred etc creating a prison of our own making around us. There is therefore an urgent need for us to find a way out of this prison. It is our desires that bind us. So our real bondage is not life or the world but our unending desires. |
| Masters say that, “Every human being in this world desires to be happy and lead a life without difficulties. However without any proper reason one does encounter difficulties through one's life. Why is this so? It is because of the actions in one's past life one will need to face these difficulties in the present life. For one not to have difficulties it's necessary that one should not sin in one's life. How then can man live a life without committing sin? The single most important factor to committing sin is driven by selfish desires. When this is so, man lives in a state of constant dissatisfaction. When man exists in this state even if there was abundance one will deem it to be insufficient. In order to satisfy or fulfill one's selfish desires or greed man continues to consume a great deal of energy in search of material pursuits. In this situation in order to try and attain satisfaction one often gets deviated from performing righteous actions. Situations will arise when truth/honesty is placed aside and sin is committed. If man wants to lead a life without sin and live on the path of truth they will at first need to derive satisfaction from what they have and peace will follow with certainty”. |
| The mind creates attachments; it is full of thoughts and desires. At the same time it also controls and directs human senses. Humans have five bodily senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. Ancient Vedas prescribe that a true Yogi is one who is in control of his five senses. These senses when used as our useful servants become valuable assets but if we allow them to be masters and follow them blindly, problems arise in our life journey. |
| Sathya Sai Baba says : “ The mind is said to be the instrument of both bondage and liberation. Allow these servers to lead it outward: it binds. Allow the intelligence to prevail upon it to look inward for bliss: it liberates.” |
| In Mahabharat Krishna drove Arjuna’s chariot having five horses. Our senses are like these horses with mind as the charioteer /Krishna. The horses need an able driver like Lord Krishna to ensure that all the horses’ act in unison as a team and not go astray so that the vehicle can safely reach its intended destination. |
| One often finds a slogan written on railway platforms, “fewer luggages more comfort and makes travel a pleasure.” Desires are like our excess luggage. The more you have the more is the discomfort. So in order to make our life’s journey a comfortable and pleasurable one, there is a need to lessen our luggage (our desires). The root cause of all mental disquiet is because of desires. |
| You may argue that without a desire there can be no action and without a desire to win one can not achieve anything in life. By undertaking the spiritual practice of ceiling of desires (COD) the Masters are asking you to check and control only those desires which are unnecessary, you can do without, which are wasteful, are unwanted and are negative. Masters say that, “Effort must be there, there is nothing wrong in putting ones effort and energy to completing the tasks on hand. Effort and actions generated out of selfish desire are two different aspects. Effort is what one puts behind one's capability. Without effort one cannot move and progress forward in life. Seek desires based on capacity and put in efforts to achieve this. In life it is not important to please all of man's desires it's more important to lead a life without sin. If one wants to lead a life without sin one should first derive satisfaction from what they already have. When one leads such a life, discipline will set in and there will be a ceiling on desires. Without discipline desires will continue to constantly grow and take control and rule. It's important for every one to have discipline and ceiling on ones desire in order to lead a life in happiness and with higher purpose.” |
| Evolution theory suggests that the supremacy of humans in the world is due to its highly evolved intelligent mind. Humans have a fleeting mind. In a day it churns out thousands of thoughts out of which stems hundreds of desires which a human wants to experience, possess and/or achieve. Human mind can therefore be compared to a swift monkey who jumps from one branch of the tree to the other without effort, so does our mind which also behaves like a monkey and goes from one desire to another in no time. The entire human life and its existence is therefore consumed or rather wasted, in chasing these never ending desires. |
| In rural areas, farmers put monkey traps around their fields to protect their crop from monkey menace. These are narrow neck earthen pots in the base of which the farmer puts some sweets or nuts. The monkey will put his hand inside and take a fist full of food. Now it finds it cannot take its arm out with a closed fist. Monkey’s greed does not let him open his fist and let go of all the food, so it gets caught. In the same way we are also victims of our desires and attachments by which we have fastened shackles around us. Just like the monkey our bondage and liberation is in our own hands. The world can be compared to the earthen pot /monkey trap. Our life and its situations are like the narrow top. Our desires are the sweets/nuts in the pot. When we put our hand in the pot to reach the nuts (desires) our hands get stuck. When we shed the nuts (desires) and release our grip we are able to take the hand out from the narrow top of the pot. |
| The five human senses mentioned above tempt our monkey mind to become a slave to external beauty, multitude of sounds/melodies, smells/fragrances, tickling tastes and tactile sensations. |
| Gandhiji’s life was in fact a message to the world on the importance of simple living and high thinking. He truly exhibited the quality of “Ceiling on Desires”. He had curtailed his needs and desires to a bare minimal; Gandhiji had no real property in his name, he was very frugal and never wasted anything not even a morsel of food. He wore only khadi unstitched clothes spun by him and had very few possessions like one watch, 2 pairs of sandals, one plate for meals, one tumbler, one spinning wheel, one cot and a bedding. He use to write letters in recycled paper made in his ashram; sometimes he use to write messages on the unprinted/unused portion of the newspaper. He knew the need to conserve consumption of paper so that trees can be saved. That is why he was called the Father of the nation and given the title of Mahatma. One of his other possession of which he was very found of was a little wooden carving of three sitting monkeys, one monkey held his hands over his eyes, one covered his ears and the third placed his hands over its mouth. In his book “My Experiments with Truth” he refers to the importance of taming the monkey mind and he wrote that in his moments of weakness these three wooden monkeys would inspire him. He candidly discusses his experiences, his struggles and the constant inner conflicts during his efforts to tame his monkey mind while curbing some of his desires. He was indeed a very courageous although frail bodied. |
| Lord Hanuman, the monkey god in the ancient India epic Ramayana is adoringly worshipped by Hindus, do you know why? Because of his steadfast service and dedication to his master Lord Rama. The symbolic depiction of Hanuman as a monkey represents our instinctive/impulsive and wandering mind, our animal nature with all its cravings and greed. But Hanuman by dedicating himself to the service of his master he was able to raise his animal consciousness to God consciousness, where he became the favourite god for the Hindus. His story suggests that by selfless service one can escape from the trap in which we have allowed our self to be caught by our own greed and unnecessary attachments. Our monkey mind can be tamed through our selfless service and devotion to the Higher Self, which Rama represents. Hanuman’s life is an inspiring example it shows that our true goal in life is devotion to our Higher self and to be in service to others. The purpose of human life is to serve others who are less unfortunate than you and also to dedicate ones self to the service of the Divine/the Higher self or the Real Self as done by Lord Hanuman. |
| Masters say that we are all Gods or Ramas in actuality. This kind of selfless service to others is the real worship of God and to Self. Doing service or Seva to others is also treating them with love in our daily encounters – not just doing some thing for them. |
| According to Ramana Maharishi, “Selfless service to others is the only way to fight the ill effects of Kali yuga, the darkest of all the yugas. No other spiritual activity is as powerful or beneficial than the activity of selfless seva”. |
| Sai Baba says, “The activity in the shape of service charged with love fulfils the aim of all paths to the Godhead. It is a more exalted means of spiritual progress than such other ways as meditations, bhajans and yoga”. |
Check Over Consumption of Natural Resources |
| We have to make a conscious effort to check our wasteful habits, attitudes and desires. Only then can we claim to live the real purpose of life. The most important exercise in the practice of ceiling of desires is to stop wasting our precious life and all its gifts. The spiritual discipline of Ceiling of Desires teaches us to limit our personal desires, stop over/wasteful consumptions and misuse of natural resources starting with simple daily needs of our precious yet scarce resource of water, food and energy. The five primary elements of life on this planet are water, air; fire, earth and the element of sky are the most precious gifts of God to humanity without which its survival is impossible, so we must use them moderately, with wisdom, gratitude, and humility. |
| We have to open ourselves to see what we can do. Start with using one bucket of water for your bath, or putting on and off the lights each time you enter or leave the room, thereby saving energy. Have a realization that just because you have the money you do not have the right to indulge in over/wasteful consumption of precious resources like food, water, electricity and gasoline. But at what cost the suffering of the people who have no water, electricity or enough to eat?
For there are many different approaches to serving the planet Earth for conserving and protecting its valuable resources (not all of them applicable to everyone). Start with these: 1) Reduce our consumption, 2) Reuse what we have, 3) Repair what we have, and 4) Recycle what we cannot reuse or repair. |
| Human desires are countless but there are four major areas in human life which needs to be checked and controlled from being wasted in order for humans to lead a happy and fulfilling life, which are : |
| 1) Money, (2) Food, (3) Time & (4) Energy. |
| You will soon realize that you not only have extra money, good nourishing food, also have more time, are able to save vital energy (prana) and not get tired to share what you have saved with other less fortunate people. |
| Sharing the surplus with others be it money, food, time, energy or knowledge is the Highest service (Paramseva). In this act (Seva) the giver benefits more than the recipient. |
| Unless our consciousness has expanded through the practice of Ceiling of Desires, we shall not know the true benefits. So we must constantly be aware of and always practice ceiling on desires this is the most exalted spiritual practice for achieving our Ascension and raising the light of God in our being for our peace and well being. |
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