Authentic Desires Vs Ego Attachment
The ultimate freedom doesn't come from manifesting your desires. It's having a deep knowing that you're good with or without them. It doesn't mean you can't have them, it just means your happiness/okayness is no longer dependent on them.
How To Tell The Difference Between Authentic, Aligned Desires Versus Ego Attachment
Authentic, Aligned Desires: a desire that your happiness, wholeness, worth or okayness isn’t dependent on, feels more like a preference ("it would be nice but I'm good either way")
- You feel grounded, calm and clear. No emotional highs or lows about it.
- You know you're good with or without it
Ego Attachment: a desire that your happiness, wholeness, worth or okayness is dependent on
- You feel a manically excited "high" feeling at the idea of having it or when you get it
- You feel disappointed, like something is wrong with you or like something is missing without it
- There's a sense of urgency to it
- You feel less than without it
“The tragedy of an attachment is that if its object is not attained it causes unhappiness. But if it is attained, it does not cause happiness – it merely causes a flash of pleasure followed by weariness, and it is always accompanied, of course, by the anxiety that you may lose the object of your attachment.” - Anthony De Mello
How To Begin Freeing Yourself From Attachment and Return To Your Inner Sense Of Wholeness
1. Start becoming aware of where your desires are coming from
- Why do I want this? Is it for a thrill? Is it to fill something I perceive is lacking in me? Or is this coming from wholeness and alignment?
- Do I feel disappointed if I don't get it? Or high if I do? Or am I okay either way?
- Does this feel urgent/frantic or grounded and clear?
- Would I want it even if nobody ever saw it or knew I got it?
2. When the feeling of lack/attachment is coming up, FEEL the feelings instead of reACTing to them or repressing them
You don't actually NEED anything for inner peace and alignment, as much as the mind likes to think. There's just a feeling in you making it feel that way. Most people react to the feeling by seeking to fill it externally. But seeking wholeness is how you lose awareness of wholeness.
The key to freedom is to go to the source - the feeling. Once it's released, you will feel clear/whole and able to act in alignment with your intuition (rather than seeking to fill the illusion of lack which only perpetuates it). And what unfolds from here always yields greater results.
"The ego is unaware of its true nature of abundance and wholeness, so it always feels a sense of lack and acts to try to fill itself. The higher Self by definition is fully awake to itself and feels no lack of any kind. Impulses of action that arise from the higher Self begin and end in abundance, joy, gratitude and fulfillment." - Deepak Chopra
As you release any emotions blocking your inner clarity and wholeness, notice which desires completely lose their luster and which ones stick around. This shows you if it's a true, intuitive desire or if it was just a feeling of lack making you think you wanted it (ego).
Let yourself see attachment for what it really is: an illusion that just creates more suffering, misery and disappointment.
Once you see through the illusion by feeling the feeling through and realizing you can feel completely whole on the other side without anything needing to have changed outside, you're free (it's not that you weren't before...it's just that there were emotions creating the perception of lack seeming to block it).
Your happiness/okayness is no longer dependent on it and you can move through life freely and intuitively choosing what's in alignment for you without NEEDING or DEPENDING on any of it.
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