Before anything can happen in sadhana, you have to desire it to happen. A podcast from Satsang with Shambhavi
Podcast First Words
Student: How do you practice setting aside the need to be OK, to be right, to be seen well? Is that something that you can practice? Or do you just keep it in mind all the time?
Shambhavi: It is something you can practice. But what you can’t practice is the desire to do it. Every effort begins with a desire. And desire I’m sure has myriad instigators. But there are two main ways that desire appears. Desire is like a river, moving us in a certain direction.
So one way that desire appears is when we do sadhana. We gain clarity about the things that brought us pleasure or rewards, kept us feeling protected in some way, got us through the day, or got us through various social situations. We start to experience those things as limiting and imprisoning. We really begin to feel the discomfort, burden, and the way that those things are cramping us. We begin to feel how inauthentic they are. We begin to really feel they’re not really giving us the rewards that we want, and that very often they’re just masking a lot of unhappiness and loneliness. This is important to feel and not mask.
When we really begin to feel the burden of those behaviors that maybe we got rewards from before, then the desire to be free of those things starts to increase. And then we have the opportunity to set it aside. Because in a moment when those behaviors are manifesting, we can feel the desire to step out of those things. And eventually we will find a way to step out of them.
