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What is the point of spiritual study? What is it we hope to accomplish through meditation, or by reading the Upanishads or The Bible or the Bhagavad Gita or The Power of Now? What is it we are looking for? Is there a common denominator?
The Veda would tell us there is a driving force within us. It is the force of evolution. As individual expressions of nature, each of us embodies this evolutionary force. Another way to say it would be an insistence upon progressive change. Progressive change is what our very being demands of us. It is what pushes and pulls us forward, reaching always for more life and for more joy. Indeed, joy is nature's way of indicating to us the direction in which our evolution lies. It makes that direction attractive to us and filled with promise. This is charm. This is desire. And we know somehow that this system of desire/fulfillment can be helped by 'spiritual study.' By meditation.
Even if we are in a stage of life where we don't feel particularly 'spiritual' or don't want to 'improve our conscious contact with God,' indeed we may not care even if God exists at all, still there will be within us a desire to reach beyond ourselves--to improve our time in the marathon, or the number of pull-ups we can do, to publish a book or win a case or pass the bar or improve our golf game or finish reading a thick novel or teach the dog a new trick or lose ten pounds or find a partner.
In our mind we may have the thought that these things will make us happy; but really, most of us have tried and failed to make ourselves happy by accomplishing one thing or another so many times that in a very real way we know it's not going to work this time, either. Maybe something else is at work here. Nature knows what direction we must move in. It indicates to us that direction by showing us something 'over there' that attracts us. Perhaps the thought of that thing bringing us happiness is simply that--a thought. Our mind's way of explaining to us what's going on. And perhaps what's really happening is that we are being driven forward by evolution. We are embodying evolution by following charm, following the indication from nature of the direction in which joy resides.
Perhaps what's really happening is that we are fulfilling our assignment here by entering into life fully and stepping forward day by day by day, always reaching for more. What if we began to see that reaching as a good thing? What if the desire for more could be seen as an indication of our connectedness to the truth of our being? Maybe then we could find more joy in the stepping forward, and stop making the mistake of thinking the joy lies only in the fulfillment of the desire.
Maybe then we could embrace this part of ourselves as natural and normal, rather than letting it tell us what's wrong with us and what we need to do or get or be in order to fix it. Maybe then we could start loving ourselves as the incomplete-but-moving-always-in-the-direction-of-completion-expressions-of-nature that we are.
Today I will pay attention to charm and desire as it occurs to me, knowing that it is merely an orienting device, rather than an image of what I need to accomplish in order to be completed.
 Kid Flying a Kite, Emerald Isle, N. Carolina
Copyright © 2011 Jeff Kober
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