Overcoming the Distracting Force of Vital Desire to Find and Live the Truth of One’s Life

Wind is a metaphor for the vital force. The vital being is moved by desire. When we covet or desire something, we are tossed about as by a great gust of wind. This is the normal state for most people, and they just get tossed about from one focus to another trying to achieve what is held before them as an object of desire. The other great motive force in the vital being is fear. Fear is the sense that one may lose what one has, whether, life, well-being and health, family, wealth, status, or any other thing which is the object of desire.

Desire carries away the mind and its ability to focus. People wind up suffering as a result of decisions made or actions taken under the impulsion of desire or fear. They then wind up wasting time, energy and other resources which could be better applied if they held their senses under control.

When we reflect on the purpose and significance of our lives, we eventually come to understand that the pursuit of pleasure is not and should not be the objective we put before ourselves. We come to understand that there is a deeper intention that eventually requires our support, attention, dedication and persevering efforts.

The answer does not come out of a book, a specific line of teaching or adherence to a particular doctrine. Rather, it comes from one recognising within oneself the divine nature of existence, finding the spark within that represent our true self, and learning how to adhere to and follow its guidance.

Just as the strong wind has no hold upon a mighty rock, so Mara has no hold upon a man who does not live in pursuit of pleasure, who has good control of his senses, who knows how to moderate his appetite, who is endowed with unshakable faith and who wastes not his energies.” [The Dhammapada]

The Mother writes: “What the Dhammapada means when it speaks of faith is not at all the belief in a dogma or a religion, it is not even faith in the teaching of the Master; it is faith in one’s own possibilities, the certitude that whatever the difficulties, whatever the obstacles, whatever the imperfections, even the negations in the being, one is born for the realisation and one will realise.”

“The will must never falter, the effort must be persevering and the faith unshakable. Then instead of spending years to realise what one has to realise, one can do it in a few months, sometimes even in a few days and, if there is sufficient intensity, in a few hours. That is to say, you can take a position within yourself and no bad will that attacks the realisation will have any more power over you than the storm has over a rock.”

“After that, the way is no longer difficult; it becomes extraordinarily interesting.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pp. 126-127