Yoga in the age of Desire

What I love about the teachings of Tantra is that unlike other philosophies which require one to renounce from the world to achieve spiritual ‘success’, tantra says that we can reach spiritual mastery AND achieve worldly success.  

In fact, it’s our relationship to ourselves and to the world around us that forges the path for our spiritual practice.

Tantra teaches us that our life is our practice and our practice is our life, we don’t need to walk away from anything to be spiritual. It’s in the ordinary, mundane aspects of our worldly life that is the arena for the extraordinary, the canvas of our spiritual practice. 

However, there is one clause to this philosophy. 

If we can have both, how does having and fulfilling our worldly desires not inhibit our spiritual growth? Doesn’t spiritually deem desires ‘bad’ and ‘un-yogic’?

Yoga teaches us that desires aren’t ‘bad’, it’s the projection we place on them that is. When we expect to get a particular outcome from our desires and then find ourselves attached to that expectation, this is when suffering arises.

When we project a desired outcome, or are attached to a desire we are disempowering ourselves. We say “I’ll be happy when” or “I didn’t get the job, I’m devastated”, “If I don’t get a high grade, I’m a failure” and are telling ourselves that happiness, fulfillment, wholeness, and wellbeing  is ‘out there’, attached to those desires, but it isn’t.  

Yoga teaches us to have, what a wonderful philosophy teacher of mine Sharada Devi calls, ‘non-binding desires’ which means non-attachment to the outcome of our desires.

When we aren’t attached and bound to the outcome of our desires, they don’t define us and they don’t determine our happiness or unhappiness. 

Yes we may have preferences, we may prefer to get the job or pass the test but we are ok even if our preferences aren’t met. Of course, this understanding doesn’t bypass the reality that not getting that job or passing that test may bring. These things of course can be life-changing, but that’s precisely the point...life is always changing. 

We can’t control anything in this life as best as we may try. 

What we can control is our relationship to it. 

Yoga is about our state of being.

Who are we when our desires aren’t met? 

Who are we then they are?