By Deepak Chopra, MD

 

Desire is inescapable, and one could spend years trying to discover if human desire is a blessing of a curse. But right this minute a more practical question demands attention. How can you get what you want? Beyond the basic necessities for food, water, and shelter, which are enough to satisfy the desire to survive, human beings invent countless other desires. What we all experience is that some of our desires come true while others don’t. That seems clear enough, but in fact people approach this simple fact from very different angles. If asked, “How do you get what you want?” or an even bigger issue, “How do you make a dream come true?” people will offer answers that aren’t at all compatible:

–Desires are fulfilled and dreams come true if you work hard enough and never stop fighting for what you want.

–Dreams come true only if they are meant to. It hardly matters what you do; destiny or karma plays the major role.

–It’s pure luck which desires come true and which ones don’t.

–Making your dreams come true is a spiritual journey. Prayer, meditation, and good karma are critical.

–Dreams come true by the grace of God. To make your dream come true, you must surrender to divine will.

–Desire is self-fulfilling. Every intention includes a path to fulfillment within its structure, however remote fulfillment may seem to be.

–Getting what you want is inevitable, but you have to look deep enough. Fulfillment can occur on the level of fantasy, dream, or imagination. It doesn’t have to be physical. (more…)