Do You Let Your Desires Choose You?

We don’t choose our desires, but our desires choose us.

Maria Hubmann
2 min readJul 8, 2021
Photo by Dương Trần Quốc on Unsplash

We cannot choose to desire something else than we desire. It’s possible that we don’t like our desires for various reasons. Maybe the desire doesn’t make sense and we judge it as stupid, maybe we think it’s too big and unattainable for us, or maybe we consider the desire to be amoral and we are ashamed to have it.

When we judge and shame our desires or something else about us, we push it into the unconscious, where it continues to exist of course. The lost self as a disowned part of our personality would be an example. By pushing parts of us away, we made it much harder for us to have any conscious say about it.

Nevertheless, desires want to be fulfilled, even when we consciously don’t want that.

Have you had the experience that you have longed for something for years until you finally got it. The day came, your desire was fulfilled — and it was kind of anticlimactic?

Desires change through fulfillment, so the fastest way to get rid of a desire is to fulfill it.

Sure, some desires stay with you for years, but even they change and grow. You can’t skip the “lower” level desires to go straight to the “more grandiose” ones, just as you can’t talk yourself out of a desire. Ever tried to tell yourself that wanting neon pink sneakers with the golden stars really isn’t that important / appropriate for your age or will destroy the planet, so you better want something important?

Did it work? For me it doesn’t.

In tantra everything is sacred: peace, desire, frustration and pick sneakers.

The more you allow yourself to have the “lower” desires, the more fulfilled you will feel and the more generous you become.

What desire are you a bit ashamed of to have? Share it and you will notice that the sting of shame lessens.

Deepen your body awareness and train your mental awareness with my free guided body meditation.

Originally published at https://mariahubmann.com on July 8, 2021.

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Maria Hubmann

Embodiment coach for scientists. Biologist. Maker of wearable art at Passionarta. I help scientists feel their bodies to feel calmly grounded. mariahubmann.com