How to tap the power of desire – Desire is a power like petrol; unlike petrol however, it is not mechanical, being associated with consciousness. While tapping petrol requires appropriate instruments, tapping desire requires appropriate intentions. When intention is consciously chosen and cultivated, it is often called purpose. 

Let’s understand the tapping of the power of desire in three stages:

Raw power: Mere desire is like petrol kept in containers that aren’t connected with any useful instrument. Such raw power is not immediately usable and can be potentially dangerous. 

Harnessed power: When we concentrate our desire on a tangible purpose, that’s like petrol put in a vehicle such as a car — it enables us to get things done. However, petrol can power a car to a library or a drug joint or even to run over pedestrians on a pavement. So too can desire crystallized into purpose make us do things that are healthy, unhealthy or even downright evil. 

Highest power: We need not just any purpose, but a wisely chosen purpose (Bhagavad-gita 02.41). Wisdom in this context refers to both the intelligence to understand what we are best suited to do and the diligence to persist in that endeavor through various external and internal obstacles. 

How can we sharpen our intelligence? By studying the Gita, which takes us deep within, to the core of who we are. Such self-understanding helps us recognize the desires that matter the most to us. 

How can we strengthen our diligence? By adopting time-tested practices of yoga as described in the Gita. These practices empower our core desires and disempower our superficial desires, thereby making it easier for us to translate our deepest, most important desires into our defining purpose.  

When we channel our desire toward a spiritually informed purpose, we gain access to our highest power.

One-sentence summary: 

Desire itself is raw power; desire directed toward a tangible purpose is harnessed power; desire directed toward a spiritually informed purpose is the highest power.

Think it over:

  • How is desire like raw power?
  • Why is purposefully directed desire not enough?
  • How does a spiritually informed purpose help us best tap the power of desire?

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02.41: Those who are on this path are resolute in purpose, and their aim is one. O beloved child of the Kurus, the intelligence of those who are irresolute is many-branched.

How to tap the power of desire

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