Unwanted Thoughts

"Unwanted thoughts; How to deal with unwanted thoughts and desires."

06/19/89 Satsang (Discourse) With

Maitreya

 

Maitreya: You never know with God, how it's going to turn out. You have to love Him and trust that it's going to work out fine. You're going to get your purified desires but don't be impatient.




Guest: I don't even think I know what my desires are. Except I think I know that one of my true desires is to go to the Father, to be One with the Father. I know I have a lot of minor desires.


Maitreya: Like what?

 


Guest: Like my desire for a relationship, for marriage or whatever. I know that's a very strong one. In fact I don't know if I've been going about it the right way but I had been trying to work on the attachment to that desire after I left here last time, because when I was here in the winter, I realized how strong that had become. I realized that it was an attachment that could get in my way, and that I needed to work on it.


Maitreya: When you come close to God, whatever impurities and desires you have become much more magnified. It's just like a pond, as long as you don't stir it, it doesn't look that dirty. The sediment and the dirt are accumulating down at the bottom of the pond, and you don't even know they exist. Now stir that water and see what happens.

You will see that dirt underneath will come out. You will say, "I didn't even know that so much dirt existed in this pond. I thought this pond was so clear and clean. I've been working to clean up this pond for a long time. What are these junks coming up?"

That is why the moment you turn toward God you see you are bound more with dirt, junk and creatures in you. That is why it's a good time to clear them up, because when you stir them up and they come out then you can skim them off, take them out of the water, and make the water clean. So it's not very surprising that when you came here you saw your desires much more magnified, and you could clearly face them.

That's another thing we do here. In the Communities of Light you have to face yourself because there are so many light beings living here, and everyone is working on one another. It's just like a play. It's something that you cannot escape from, being in a very intense environment, and that intensity, psychologically, physically and spiritually, is purifying.

It's not a community based on the self-centeredness that, "I have my little house, I have my wife and child and that's it. I don't care what my neighbor does." That is not a Community of Light. Even a married couple living in one house with their children have problems, and that is intense. But now expand that to a community where every-one has to relate to one another, love one another, and bring God and light into it.

People who are attracted to such communities have a lot of light in them. They are very high beings that even desire to live in such an environment. Still, when they come to this kind of environment they see, "Oh look, I still have so many things to go through." And that is good.

You shouldn't be discouraged because you have so much to go through, but indeed you have to be very happy because it is the environment in which "I" can eventually face these creatures. If I have to go through something, it means it is something I have to go through. So the sooner you go through it, the sooner you're going to get over this, and you will be free sooner to do whatever you are here to do and have been called to do. So the Community of Light is an intense environment.

For instance, there is a Guru in India who used to have Intensive Courses. What they did was create very intense environments where the people had to confront one another and themselves. But I say, "Why do you need an Intensive Class? Life itself is intense. It's a class. You don't need to create an Intensive Class to allow people to face themselves." Now in the Communities of Light that life becomes probably 100 times more intensified.
 
 


Question: This is like one of those intense classes but you're living it in your real life?


Maitreya: That's right. It's even more intense than those classes because those classes just lasted for a couple of days. But the intensity in the Communities of Light is constant. You constantly have to face yourself, to examine yourself, to realize and pick up different energies. It's easy just to close your house and live in a house by yourself. to live in a close environment (only your own house or alone) is kind of an inverted environment, you fall back to yourself. And when you fall back to yourself you create a lot of fears from outside. It becomes like a trap for you. That's why there is a lot of fear in many people. In the environment where people only care about their own house, or their own family, they cut themselves off from the rest of society, and actually crime thrives because no one cares about the neighbor or the other person.

They even become more fearful as the crimes become more intense. They lock themselves in more, and the fears are intensified. They care even less for the outside. The outside becomes worse. They fall back and the cycle goes on and on.

But if they open themselves up and create the Communities of Light, crime is going to go away. It has no choice, because darkness can only exist when there is no light. When the light comes can the darkness exist? No. You go into a dark room and flip on the switch. The light comes on and the darkness is gone.

So darkness is not really powerful. It's very powerless. Darkness is powerful to a lot of people because they don't know Light. The moment you know Light the darkness is gone. You wonder, what happened to it? What happened to all my desires, fears, attachments, etc? They are not there any longer. They just vanish. Darkness is not really something that you have to fight with. The only thing you have to fight for is to bring your focus back to God all the time. The more you are in focus with God, the farther away the darkness will be.

 
 

Question: So even when I feel those attachments, desires and fears, and then just let them go, I then immediately try to remember to bring my focus back to God? Like maybe saying, Thank you Father for touching me, realize that God is touching me. Because I've been doing some of that.


Maitreya: Right. I used to give Satsang even before I started the Mission about what I called creatures. These creatures run people's lives, and have control of their lives. They can be called principalities.
Actually that is our sub-conscious mind. It's programmed after many lifetimes and this life. So as I said, we act in different situations in a certain way because we have been programmed to react that way. And also it was imposed on us to have a special kind of lifestyle.
Society has imposed on us, that because you are a woman you have to do this and this. You have to marry, have a child and so on. Or you are a man, you have to go through this, get a job, get married and so on. So some of our desires are really not ours, they're society's desires which are things we think we should be doing. If we're not doing them we are worthless, we are not accepted. This is again a kind of longing for human attention, for human acceptance, because we want to be accepted by society. We want to be respected by our elders and our family, etc. And we sometimes feel that if we don't do those things the way they want us to do them, they are not going to respect us, they are not going to love us, and they are going to reject us.

Actually, we reject ourselves first because we have set up a goal and a certain way that things should happen to us. Then when they don't happen the way we want, we start feeling worthless, and we start rejecting ourselves. When we reject ourselves we feel that they have rejected us. But in truth no one is worthless because we are all created in the image of God. How can anyone be worthless? How can anyone be a failure? How can anyone not be what God wants them to be? Sometimes we are not supposed to be married, we are not supposed to have children, we are not supposed to be educated, we are not supposed to have a lot of money.
All those things are what many people desire. Some people are not going to be happy even after they've obtained them. Someone works and makes a lot of money. He buys a big house. He buys a car and a lot of things.
No one likes a person who is a show off, who has a lot of money and is trying to show it off to everyone, "Oh I have this mansion and expensive car," etc. The people who really pay attention to them don't pay attention to them for themselves but for their money. And they know it. In their very essence they know that this attention is not real. In their essence they really are lonely for real love, for real attention. All that money didn't buy what they were longing for.

Some people want to be married and have a wife or a husband. They think, "If I get married, that's it, I'll be happy." They get married. They won't be happy, because you never can find happiness in another person. If I am looking for happiness and love, and my part-ner also is looking for happiness and love, neither of us have it. We both are looking for the same thing. If you are looking for something, that means you don't have it, you need it. Just like (I put it always in a monetary sense because it's much easier for people to relate to), if I don't have money and you don't have money, how can we help each other monetarily? Neither of us have money. So I can't give you any money, neither can you give me any.

If you don't have love, if you don't have happiness, and if I don't have love and I don't have happiness, we both are seeking for the same thing. Then I want you to give me love and happiness, and you want me to give you love and happiness. But you don't have it and I don't have it. So I can't give it to you, and you can't give it to me. Then what happens? You marry and you see this person doesn't have it either. You become unhappy, you become despondent. You become agitated about the whole life, and you start blaming your partner. And your partner starts blaming you, because you don't want to see the faults in yourself. No one wants to see fault in oneself. If you don't meditate, you don't really want to know yourself.

Most of the people are always looking for someone or somewhere to blame for their problems, because they don't want to see what is in themselves. But if you know God, you connect with Him and you have the Love and Happiness and Fulfillment from God, then you have it. Everyone is looking for what you have, and everyone will come to you. Then you can give it to them and fill them up. When they are filled up, they can give it to other people. Then they can fill them up. It's just like warm fuzzies, the more you give, the more there will be. So you become full of this beautiful Love of God which goes through you all the time.

Then you realize, that is what I was looking for all my life. I wasn't looking for a relationship. I wasn't looking for a man, or a woman, or a child, or money, or anything. I was looking for this Love. That's when you find the partner you want, you need and you're looking for. You suddenly see everything is happening for you. Before this happens you were looking for it in the wrong places. Focus on God, the rest will be provided, if it is His Will. Then you know, that's good. That's good.

 
 

Question: How come I felt that I already knew that but just hearing you say it made such a difference? The Father coming through?


Maitreya: That is what Satsang is. Actually it is said, you meet your teacher when he says things that you already knew.


 
 
Question: You meet your teacher when he says things that you already knew? Why is that? That's not hitting me.


Maitreya: You just said it yourself. That you already knew everything I just said. But when I say it, it becomes clearer for you.
 
 


Guest: Clarity. OK.


Maitreya: Because I'm not just saying it, I'm touching your Soul with it. I'm stirring it up for you. I'm bringing it more into focus for you. That is what Satsang is. That's why Satsang is so powerful and that's why it is given.
 
 


Guest: Thank you. Thank you Father. I was saying before that I was having all these thoughts and it really bothered me because I was having some thoughts, a lot that had to do with you. And it just bothered me because here is this person that I know I'm supposed to respect and love.


Maitreya: You're not supposed to do anything.


 
 
Guest: I think I'm supposed to.


Maitreya: You're not supposed to, you know. You do it because you want to. You desire to.

 
 

Guest: Yes, yes. And yet I was having all these thoughts toward you coming up that I didn't like and everything. And I was saying, here's this holy person, and then remembering that when I was younger I always had this animosity towards people who were supposed to be holier than thou. That helped a lot when that came to the surface because a lot of those people would say and not do, "You should be like this" and so forth and yet not do it.


Maitreya: Well, sometimes it's much easier to say than to do it. You have to have compassion even for those who say and don't do because really what they say is the desire of their Soul, what they want to be. To want to be what they say and yet not be what they say is what they're going to blame themselves for even harsher than you blame them, for the failure they are. So in a sense to be a complete master who says and does also, is very rare.
 
 


Guest: It feels so good. Some of them little demons left!


Maitreya: Do you have a lot of demons?
 
 


Guest: It felt like I did. I'm sure there are some more. And if I'm sure of it that means there are, right?


Maitreya: Everyone has them. What kind of thoughts did you have about me?
 
 


Guest: Sexual thoughts. And I did what you said. In my meditation or before I was going to sleep at night, I lived it out and saw the emptiness of it. I saw the only reason I was having the sexual feelings towards you was because what I was really looking for was what you would be able to transmit to me.


Maitreya: Yes. It is very natural for the people to have sexual thoughts about me. It is not unnatural because that's the only way they know how to express their love, especially women. But they really love me with their Soul. And eventually they transform that energy to the Soul level.
 

 

Guest: As we bring it up?


Maitreya: Exactly. Eventually you really want to love me in that level, not with sexual energy but in the highest level of God energy. And when you love me that way, then you will be in the ecstasy of the Love of God. That ecstasy is even greater than any sexual experience that anyone ever had.


 
 
Guest: I know because in one of my relationships I got to see some of the emptiness of sex. Well, I know I saw it before that too, but that really was what made me decide to stop. Until I get married, I will not have sex with anyone.


Maitreya: Very beautiful. We have to find men and women who are clear about this, very clear. The more they become disciplined to keep themselves for marriage, the more they can transmit the energy to the higher thoughts. When they marry, they marry with a good reason, because they marry for God, not for just a sexual relationship or something else.

Because they never had any sexual relationship before marriage, that is not the greatest part of their relationship. Their real attraction becomes more and more for what God wants them to be, to be a cou-ple, to create children, to become a base of society, to bring God into their family, to make their family environment a beautiful place for other people to come and see what a relationship based on God does. And the two people are one in God. It's not that kind of a marriage where, "OK, if I divorce you now I can get half of the house."


 
 
Guest: Very temporary.


Maitreya: And very crude, very low level consciousness. I'm glad that you have decided that. It is a very beautiful decision. And don't worry about those thoughts. They are there. You can sometimes do nothing about them. The only thing is, realize that they are not from the Highest and just let them go. Eventually they will vanish. And one day you will see, we are already One.

Actually the whole universe is a sexual organ, in a sense, because it creates, recreates, procreates, etc. In a sense, sex is a very spiritual energy. It is a very powerful energy. Even when the couple marry, they have to concentrate all the time that all their relationship, including sex, is really God. Then God is the Enjoyer, it's not them. Even that has to be transformed more and more toward God relationship. Eventually the physical relationship becomes very, very unimportant. Your love for each other becomes very strong, and you become One. Then, even if the physical relationship wasn't there, it wouldn't mat-ter, because you love one another for some higher reasons. So nothing is bad. Whatever God created in this universe is good (God), but it is from three kinds (ignorance, passion or knowledge).
About the topic of sexual thoughts, there is a story about Krishna (the Hindu god). The story is that Krishna (Christ) was so beautiful that all the girls around where he lived were in Love with him. They talked about nothing but Krishna. They ate, slept, walked, and smelled with the thought of Krishna.

So every night they all would go to the river bank, 15,000 of them. There Krishna would join them and would multiply Himself. Each girl would have a Krishna to herself, and they all would dance and make Love the whole night.
See the story says they would make Love the whole night. This Love-making is not referring to regular physical love-making, but spiritual ecstasy.
Krishna, as God, is present in each of us. He has already multiplied Himself so each of us can have a Krishna with His enticing flute. When we find this Krishna, then we can direct our longing for external attention or love to internal ecstasy and Joy (Ananda). Then the sexual desires for our teacher becomes our intense Love (Devotion) for him and God.
Still it might have the appearance of sexual longing or desires but it is much higher. It is like falling in Love every moment in our lives. When the thought of sexual relationship vanishes in this process, the pure Love remains. That is the creative power in you. It is strong and powerful. That is the Love which can move mountains. That is when you Love God with all your Heart, Mind and Being.

The climax of such a Love is the moment of complete unity with God...!