The Natural Flow of Fulfillment: Understanding Desire, Awareness, and Positive Results
Asleep: Choices have unforeseen consequences
Awake: Desires automatically contain their fulfillment
Most of us move through life half-asleep — repeating habits, chasing desires, and calling it free will. Yet what if every positive outcome is not random, but natural? When you awaken to the truth of awareness, you realize that each desire already contains its own fulfillment. This shift from unconscious seeking to conscious creation is the essence of awakening — the journey from “asleep” to “awake.”
Waking up needs to be very specific and concrete if it is going to take hold. That’s one of the best reasons to take a whole year in our journey. The metaphor of being asleep, of walking around in a waking dream, is ancient, but it is only a metaphor. The reality comes down to specific moments where your ego, old habits, conditioning, automatic reflexes, and unconscious beliefs loosen, and you glimpse what the Buddha meant when he declared, “One who is mindful and awake becomes a beacon to others.”
The light of self-illumination becomes who you are in the world.
Rethinking Outcomes
Such an outcome can sound lofty and far-removed, reserved for the spiritually gifted. However, true awakening isn’t a mystical event reserved for sages. It happens in small, daily moments when your old conditioning loosens, and you see life with clear eyes. Awareness begins to act through you, and what once seemed impossible starts to align naturally. But it helps to talk about outcomes in general. Science explains the universe in terms of the random activity of particles; psychology sees human behavior as erratic and impossible to enclose inside a model; in everyday life, we take the bitter with the sweet.
Against this background, how do you feel about the outcome of your next hope, wish, or desire? The rational response seems to be one of two reactions: either expect nothing or be prepared for the unexpected. In a randomized world, why should someone’s hopes, wishes, and desires be favored?
Yet there is a rich spiritual tradition for believing that what Nature intends is positive outcomes, including the outcome of your next intention, your largest dreams, your most heartfelt wishes. They are part of an ideal life, and yet most people don’t realize that finding your ideal life is one of the highest aims in Yoga, Vedanta, Buddhism, and even Christianity (taking the Sermon on the Mount as the prime document, since it leaves all outcomes to the beneficent care of divine Providence).
For the moment, set aside any skeptical reactions. The evidence of everyone’s less-than-ideal life is plain to see. The illusion is shared, and so are the frustrations, setbacks, disappointments, and faded dreams that go with it.
How Awareness Shapes Desires
It might surprise you that what comes next isn’t a spiritual message but something more objective, an outline of how desires actually work at the level of consciousness. In modern secular society, consciousness is understood as your personal possession. It belongs to “me” and my thoughts, words, and actions. If this were true, then any argument about positive outcomes would fall flat. On its own, the isolated, separate ego-personality has never figured out the deeper reality of awareness.
The conditioned mind doesn’t know its own source, which is the field of pure awareness, which is shared by all human beings but also by everything in creation. At the source resides your true self. Knowing this, the scheme for positive outcomes becomes clear for the first time.
The Four Steps to Positive Outcomes
Positive outcomes are built into your awareness, activated by four steps:
1. Be in contact with your true self.
2. Issue a clear intention mentally.
3. Let go of the intention with trust in the process.
4. Be alert to the response when it comes.
Before any spiritual traditions ever arose, these mechanics were set in place, and you still rely on them in basic ways. If you want to lift your arm, walk outside, talk on the phone, or visit a website, all four steps invisibly come into play. The connection to your true self is evident in having a clear mind. You have the intention, not necessarily in words. You let go without a moment’s hesitation, and automatically your body is bringing you the desired outcome.
Nature’s Role in Fulfillment
But getting up for a glass of orange juice seems quite different from wanting a million dollars, the ideal partner, a better job, and everything else that must happen “out there” beyond your direct control. This makes all the difference when you are asleep. But to wake up is to realize that the field of pure awareness is the source for the two worlds “out there” and “in here.”
An intention expressed in your mind is heard throughout the field. The fact that your body automatically obeys your intentions is actually Nature obeying your intentions through your body. Nature can obey your intentions directly. Why doesn’t it? Because more attention must be paid to the four stages for positive outcomes, which is this week’s project.
Practicing Awareness This Week
There are detailed descriptions of how Nature supports human desires in the teachings of Vedanta and Yoga, but finding a practical way forward is the main thing. Awakened awareness operates automatically, just as sleeping awareness does. It is in the transition that real skill can be applied, as in the four stages of intention.
This week, pay attention to the difference between an awakened approach and an unconscious approach to your desires.
1 Be in contact with your true self,
Your true self is connected when you are calm, clear, and focused. It feels disconnected when you are stressed, distracted, overwhelmed, or dominated by ego.
2 Issue a clear intention mentally.
Desires destined for the best outcome feel natural and effortless. They come spontaneously and speak softly. Desires that are likely to have undesirable outcomes are obsessive, repetitive, selfish, and pressing.
3. Let go of the intention with trust in the process.
Outcomes need an open line of communication, which is the real reason to let go. Your true self needs no reminding. The ideal is to have an intention and immediately forget that you had it. Worrying over the outcome only blocks the process and introduces disorder.
4. Be alert to the response when it comes, in whatever form.
In the awakened state, desires rise and fall, reaching the best outcome in a constant feedback loop between the two worlds “out there” and “in here.” You can’t keep watch over either world, and it is futile to try. Your body is already a marvel of inner and outer coordination, needing no input from you. Nature needs no input beyond your initial desire.
But this isn’t the same as waiting for a piece of toast to pop out of the toaster. Every single desire you have is entangled in all your past desires and those to come in the future. At the source, where your existence is timeless, fine-tuned calculations take place. Your role is to be attentive to the response your desire produces. It can be anything. Your mind might have a new angle; a sudden solution might crop up from another person; unforeseen connections could be made.
We are constantly weaving this tapestry of desire and response. It constitutes a huge part of everyday life. So you know your role already. What the path to awakening does is twofold. It makes you aware of your role, and it shows you how to get better at it.
Namaste,
Deepak
Buy Deepak’s book Awakening: The Path to Freedom and Enlightenment
