CONTROLLING ONE'S DESIRES

 

  

Attaining one's perfection is not easy.  But neither is it hard. You are here on Earth because there are lessons to be learned, trials to be overcome, and exams to be passed.  You can get a glimpse of the lessons you failed to learn in previous lives from your subconscious.

 

The mind can be divided into compartments according to psychologists.  They are the superego, the ego, and the id.  In other words, they are the conscience, the conscious mind, and the subconscious mind.  The conscience is the battleground of the left spirit and the right spirit in you.  On the right is your Guardian Angel or his representative who tempt you to do well, while Satan's representative is on your left tempting you to do badly.  Caught between is your conscious mind when you are awake, and your subconscious when you are asleep.  You decide accordingly.  You are free to choose.

But in part, your choice is influenced by the drives, obsessions, and the needs inhabiting your subconscious mind.  Apart from your own spirit, you may also be host to some rider spirits, parts of some other entities who have almost passed the exams of life except for one or two lessons, like for example sex.  Then that part spirit is allowed to be a rider and stay in your subconscious.  It is permitted so as to economize on physical bodies.  Therefore, when one solves his problems, when he learns his lessons, the corresponding part of that spirit --- the rider --- will also learn its lesson.

 

But when a man dies with great karmic debts, so great it probably cannot be atoned for in next life, then man is required to come back to Earth   The rider spirit comes back together with the major spirit in birth, just after the child comes out of the body of the mother with the umbilical chord still uncut.  So it is not unfair for an individual to have rider spirits.  When his major spirit overcomes his weaknesses, the rider spirit also learns.  When his drives and obsessions predominate, the corresponding spirit asserts himself too.  That is why sometimes temptations like in the area of sex are overpowering.  For this reason, one needs extra help.  You need extra energy.

 

This extra help and energy you can get from God directly if you so desire.  You get it through praying.  Such is the power of prayer.

 

What are the lessons you have to learn?  Let us examine your desires that you find interesting.  When you are satiated, you feel happy as if you are at the doorstep of heaven.  It is a temptation you are able to resist sometimes, but often you fail.  It is a recurrent temptation.  The first one is obviously sex.  Observe that people differ in their desire for sex.  This is because some have already learned their lessons in the previous life.  In matters of the heart, tender loving care should predominate.  Sex is secondary.  It can even be dispensed with.  What matters is the Love permeating in the home.  You can say, for many people sex is a necessary evil.  But sex per se is not evil.  But any excess of anything is not good.

 

Another lesson one has to learn is one's desire for material things.  For some money is their god.  Riches are their obsession.  They are seldom attracted to church or to spiritual things.  They love to wear good clothes, surround themselves with the finer things of life, and stuff themselves with the rarest of cuisine.  Even in matters spiritual, the more material aspect is what attracts them as in the exhibition of very expensive statues.  They camouflage this by saying the Lord wants to have the best of everything.  Only if they examine themselves in the stillness of the night will they realize that the expensive material things are but the manifestations of their attraction to material things.  But still they are better than those totally immersed in material preoccupation.   At least the former ones could part with their possessions for religious display of vanity.

People should realize that it is not material plenty that attracts God.  God will be there when there is true Love, like in a church or even in homes with Love for each member of the family radiating.  God feels as a welcome guest.  That is why you can make a church out of a home that oozes with Love.  God will not feel comfortable when there is no binding Love in the family.  Love usually inhabits when no member criticizes another.  When there is positive thinking in everyone, expecting the best of each and every member and not blowing up the worst in him.

 

Detachment from material things is important.  The opposite is what will keep man from moving upward in the ladder of spiritual evolution.  It will be hard for one to climb because his affinity for things of this Earth is the one pulling him down.  Possession of material things, being material, makes one strongly attracted to the center of Earth by the law of gravity.  And by the law of supernatural science, the holder of the material thing who has affinity with it is imprisoned and likewise pulled down.  In other words, there is a tremendous force pulling him down.

 

How then do you liberate yourself from the pull of material possessions?

 

The first is through Moderation. Do not take or enjoy anything in extreme. Do not eat in excess of what the body needs. Drink moderately. Have sex moderately. Do not consume all your time in sex. It is not the quantity or frequency that matters. It is the quality of enjoyment. The second is Slow Deprivation. When you badly want shoes which you have plenty, then postpone your purchase. When you want to buy a polo shirt or dress, and you have an excess of these things, stop and postpone. This way, you do not totally deprive yourself of the act. But this action appeases your subconscious. This is one instance when procrastination is a virtue. Postpone the satisfaction of a need.

 

Another technique in overcoming your drives is through Total Denial. You simply tell your subconscious, "Sorry, I cannot give in to you."  Denying what the subconscious wants in a way controls him, puts him in subjugation. And if you succeeded in constantly denying your subconscious, then you liberate your rider spirit.  Deprived of its strength, these rider spirits will detach from your subconscious.  Having fully learned its lessons, this rider spirit will rejoin its main spirit to prepare itself to enter the gates of heaven.  In the case of an individual, there would be a perceptible change in his personality.  Those who knew him before the rider spirit separates will say he is a changed man.  He is "born again."

 

In essence, therefore, you are back to Earth to control your subconscious desires for sex, food, wealth, honor, power, and substitute them with hunger for spiritual perfection.

 

But how do you know your desires?  It is easy.  In the stillness of the night, you can examine your past actions.  The things you badly sought after are the things you have to control.  The temptations are frequent because the left spirit assigned by God to tempt you is more aware of your weaknesses and therefore is under strict orders to continually tempt you because if you succeed in resisting you perfect yourself in Will Power.

 

And when you meditate and find the reason why, you increase your Awareness or Intelligence, and finding out the key to perfection, you help your neighbors try to do the same. You increase Love.  Jesus Christ, after going around the known world learning all the things at the time, succeeded in perfecting his Intelligence when he underwent hardships in learning all those things, when he overcame and passed the tests  of the Essenes Brotherhood, he perfected his Will Power.  When he went to Jerusalem and preached and finally exchanged his extra powers for the power to open the gates of hell, he showed his overpowering Love for man.

 

So on the road to material and spiritual perfection, it is not enough to pay up your karmic debts.  It is also necessary to control completely your subconscious by controlling its obsessed desires or drives.  You have to control the subconscious because it is he who desires material things, it is he who pulls you down to the center of Earth, and it is he who blinds your sight to look for spiritual perfection.

 

To control, first exercise moderation in all things you do.  Then when there is pressing need for sex, food, clothes, the need to command, to argue, to seek honor, postpone the satisfaction of the need. Your subconscious is temporarily appeased and so will not rebel.  Thus, you outwit your subconscious.  Then little by little, deny yourself of the need, like skipping a meal, not buying when the impulse and money are there, not commanding when the itch to command is there and therefore controlling your need for power. Deny yourself of all selfish desires and try to share whatever you have like asking people around you to partake of your food or lending your prized possessions.  These are little things but they greatly detach you from material things.

 

So when you want to embark on the road to material and spiritual perfection, control your desires.