The Compass of Desire

 

Red lotus blooming in darkness, like a flame rising from the void — symbolizing desire as both a call and a danger, the presence of Śakti without form.

The Many Faces of Desire

There is a moment, perhaps every morning, when desire first stirs.
Sometimes it is small and almost innocent:
a cup of coffee, the warmth of a blanket, the sight of a message from someone dear.
Sometimes it is grand and aching:
a longing to change everything — to move to another city, to fall in love, to start life over.

And if you look closely, desire is almost never silent.
Even when you try to be spiritual, to be detached, to “rise above it,”
there it is — whispering in the background:
If only this happened, then I would be happy.

But there is a strange paradox.
Some of these longings, no matter how fiercely we pursue them, never come true.
Others — the ones we hardly dare to think — sometimes arrive as if by magic.
A chance encounter, an opportunity that drops into your lap,
a dream fulfilled almost before you have formed the words.

Why does this happen?
Why do some desires bloom like flowers in spring,
and others stay locked in bud forever?
And why does even the fulfilled desire so often leave a trace of hunger behind it —
as if it was not really what we were looking for?

This is where the real question begins — not just what we desire,
not just how to get it,
but the deeper, almost dangerous question:
Why?

The Secret Root of Desire

If you sit with this question — really sit —
you will notice something extraordinary.
Behind the countless faces of desire there is one heartbeat.
It does not matter whether the longing is small or vast,
whether it is for a new book, a lover’s touch, a city skyline, or a vision of enlightenment —
the taste is strangely the same.

It is the taste of incompleteness.
Of something missing.
Of a self that wants to be whole.

The sages say that this is not a mistake.
This ache is not a flaw in the universe, nor a punishment.
It is Śakti Herself — the free, unbound Current of manifestation —
calling you back toward Her.

She does this in many disguises.
Sometimes as sweetness, sometimes as hunger, sometimes as restlessness that will not let you sleep.
Every desire, even the most ordinary, carries this secret message:
“Come closer. Taste Me. Remember where you came from.”

And this is why guilt or shame about desire only clouds the view.
The longing itself is innocent.
It is a compass — not pointing outward toward objects,
but inward toward the fullness from which you are never actually apart.

When the Compass is Crooked

But there is another truth we cannot skip over.
Not every desire is pure.
Some rise from a place so twisted by pain, so burned by ignorance,
that they come out as something dark:
the wish to harm, to humiliate, to manipulate, to destroy.

It would be naïve — even dangerous — to call these desires holy just because they are “energy.”
They are not signs of freedom, but cries of captivity.
They are the knots in consciousness that still believe
that peace can come from making someone else suffer,
that wholeness can be restored by breaking something outside.

And yet — and this is where the path of Kaula is merciless and compassionate at once —
even these crooked desires are not outside the play of Śakti.
Their form is poisoned, but the fire behind them is still real.
The work is not to act them out, not to feed them —
but to trace them back to their root,
to hold them in the inner fire until their smoke clears
and the original longing shows its face.

This is why the path is fierce:
because it asks you not to indulge the shadow
and not to repress it either,
but to stay with it until it melts.
To watch until the urge to hurt another is seen for what it is —
an aching cry for connection, a longing for the world to witness your wound.
When seen in this way, even the most terrible desire can become a doorway —
a chance to be freed from the chain that forged it.

Why Pāśu Desires Rarely Manifest

When Ramana Maharshi’s mother once begged him to return home,
his reply was as unyielding as stone:

“The Ordainer controls the fate of souls in accordance with their prārabdha karma.
Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen, try as you may.
Whatever is destined to happen will happen, do what you may to prevent it.
This is certain. The best course, therefore, is to remain silent.”

It is difficult to really hear this.
Because if this is true — then every success and every failure,
every fulfilled longing and every heartbreak,
was already written long before you wished for it.

This is why so many of our “pāśu” desires — the grasping, hungry, ego-driven ones —
never seem to come true no matter how hard we chase them.
Or, if they do come true, they arrive hollow —
unable to give us what we thought they would.

This insight is not cozy.
It lands like a blow.
We plan, we scheme, we strain against the limits of our life —
only to find that destiny runs its course regardless.

And yet this is the first great turning:
to see that desire, on the level of the separate self,
cannot bend the universe to its will.
It is the moment where striving is forced to pause,
where you stand still long enough to ask not just how to get what you want,
but why you wanted it at all.

Shifting from Ego to Current

When the blow has landed and the struggle quiets down,
something else becomes possible.
In that stillness, you may notice that the fight was never really against fate —
it was against your own sense of being a separate doer.

The sages say that this is the hidden doorway.
You cannot force destiny to obey your plans.
But you can step so completely into the Current
that the question of “my plans” disappears.

This does not mean becoming passive or lifeless —
it means moving from a different center.
Desire may still arise, but it no longer belongs to a contracted “me.”
It is lighter, more transparent, less binding.
Sometimes it still points toward Paris,
but now Paris is just a ripple in the play of Śakti,
not a desperate attempt to fill a hole.

And this is the paradox:
only when you stop trying to rewrite destiny
do you discover that life begins to flow with a strange new freedom.
What unfolds is not what “you” wanted —
it is what the Whole wants through you.

The Sacred Questions

And here the question returns — not as a demand,
not as a complaint to the heavens,
but as something quieter, deeper:

Why?

Not why did this happen to me
but why does anything arise at all?
Not why was my desire denied
but why does this longing burn at all — what is it trying to reveal?

This “why” is not just curiosity about causes.
It is the soul turning back toward its own Source.
To ask it sincerely is already to stand closer to the fire.
Already the knot begins to loosen,
because you are no longer running after the object —
you are following the thread back into the heart.

And if you follow this question far enough,
it begins to transform.
The “why” becomes a “who.”

Who is the one who longs?
Who is the one who suffers when the desire is denied?
Who am I — before any desire arises at all?

This is the last question,
the one that does not point outward but inward,
into the very root of being.
To ask it is to step into the flame.
And to stay with it is to be consumed
until only the Current remains.

Desire as Doorway

Perhaps this is the secret:
desire was never the enemy,
nor was it ever meant to fully satisfy you.
It was the knock on the door.
The call that lured you out of sleep.
The hand that led you, step by step,
to the very threshold of your own heart.

Some desires will still come and go.
Some will still break your heart.
But now you know — they are not random.
Each one is a messenger,
pointing you back to the place where nothing is missing.

And when you dare to stay with the question —
to let the “why” deepen until it becomes “who” —
then even longing becomes holy.
Because it has done its work:
it has brought you to the edge of yourself,
where only one question remains,
and only one answer —
silence,
and the Current that is always here.