What You Want is Not What You Need

When We Grow above Our Wants…

Our lives can be simply summed in two ways, a biological cycle of birth, and psychological cycle of arousal of a need and the chance of attaining it. However, the moment we try to look beyond these two cycles is the moment we begin living in true sense.

Most of us are trying just to survive and somehow get away with this precious boon called, Life. This is because most of us aren’t living a life of awareness. Now, what is Awareness? What is the difference between a person living live of awareness?

An aware person is someone who, is aware of his every subtle action, every word he utters, and every emotion. A person with awareness, inhales faith, exhales doubt. A great soul, Shri Jajvalya Shukla ji, says it aptly:

“I’m in search of a path where my meditation is not limited to a day, an hour, or a second, but my entire life turns into an uninterrupted Meditation.”

Such beautiful would be the result of a person living in awareness. The beauty of peace, bliss and fulfilment one feels even while, walking a few steps on this path is what we need throughout our lives. Nobody wants peace, we need it. Nobody wants bliss, we need it.

The things we want aren’t our necessities; they aren’t things worth lamenting if not achieved. If you closely dissect the incidents whenever you were unhappy or miserable, you will observe the reason behind that phase was rejection, inability to attain something that you thought you ‘need.’ In true, unbiased and huge scenario one realises that the life of happiness one experiences after attaining anything is very short. It is superficial happiness, devoured temporary. Our needs are not temporary, they are permanent. Our wants are temporary; our wants keep shifting from one thing to another. As a child we need security, protection, as we grow we seek recognition, later we want a status, an individuality. As an adult we want emotional support system in the form of spouse, and then want to have kids, then we want to provide them everything, we want to settle them, and the list goes on.

Needs Wants

I don’t say there is anything wrong in wanting something, what goes wrong is the turmoil of grief one faces in times of disparity that occurs in the procedure of obtaining things, fulfilling goals. The cloud of negativity that hovers the mind is the thing that needs be dealt with. We, as human beings, definitely want things to make our lives simpler, or may be better but only we humans are blessed with the ability to maintain our inner poise. We are blessed with immense potentiality, capability to deal with day-to-day challenges that life brings what we need is discovering that what we are born with.

We need to identify with our true self which, is infinite peace and bliss. We need to understand that, we are the child of God. We need to have a strong belief that, God has great plans for every one of us, and the small hurdles that we face are nothing but the rub that a stone has to face before it gets transformed into a diamond. We need to let God turn us into that diamond which, can brighten up many others with its spark.

When we grow above our wants, is when we will understand we don’t really want or need anything, all that we seek outside in the world is already residing in us. The path of the heaven which, we desperately keep looking for throughout our lives has its doors locked within us.