Something’s wrong. You feel off; the day has been bad, and the last one was too. You’re not sure what to do, who to talk to or what will make you feel better. You’ve been ignoring your desires, and it’s become your disease.
Understand
There’s a certain capacity we all have for conformity. We go to school, we act with manners, we’re kind to others, even when we don’t necessarily want to be. It’s these types of expectations that create the somewhat harmonious society we live in today; after all, where would we be without structure, social norms and standards? How would we even walk the streets in peace?
But there’s a certain line that gets crossed sometimes, and without even realizing it, we act in ways or do things we don’t really want to be doing.
Somewhere between your conscious and subconscious lies a gray area of free will we often ignore and skip over, like forgetting an extra step in your morning routine. This is your complacency with how you’ve been taught to act and now it’s becoming conflicted with your true desires. From this, a pressure is found upon yourself that seemingly won’t go away.
Acknowledge
If your intent is focused on something that is not your desire, you are serving something other than yourself. This makes you feel outside of yourself, leading to seemingly endless thoughts and confused voices inside your head. You’re following a direction, but is it your own?
When you ignore the gray area of your mind, you ignore yourself. You start to act toward values that are not your own — acting only in line with what you think you should be doing. You’re disconnected from yourself and who you are. Your desires, now unaccepted and unacknowledged, are beginning to have their alternate effects.
accept
A desire, when it’s acted upon, brings light, clarity and inspiration; it makes you feel true and connected to yourself. A desire ignored or cast aside haunts you, bringing you confounding confusion and voices of dread like a ghost made to make you feel crazy.
What’s wrong? Why don’t I feel right? How can I decompress from this?
You can attempt to prescribe yourself to the reality you think you should be happy in: “Yes, I want to be a doctor — Yes, I want to have this job — Yes, I want to be in this relationship,” yet you’re ignoring the itch of how you really feel. If you have to tell yourself you want something while you’re already living it, you don’t really want it at all; If you loved something, wouldn’t you just be in love?
Act
Cursing yourself to live by “shoulds” and “needs” is a binding trap you can only escape through working with the literature in your mind. Start to rewrite how you think, and instead of pressuring yourself about what could be wrong, admit what you’ve been ignoring and submit to the desires that are your true self’s wishes.
Being at peace with yourself is a direct result of acknowledging your deepest desires. It can not be attained by “trying” to have good days or acting in ways that might relieve your stress; doing things that relax you only works if you feel like it.
Only once you’ve identified with yourself will you begin to feel harmonious in and with the world around you, with others and in your surface interactions. The disease of desires’ curse only lifts once we accept what we truly want, even if that means breaking up with the reality of what we already have.