The Uncomfortable Emotion That Destroys Most Men
In a Nutshell
Most men suppress desire to avoid the discomfort of feeling out of control, leading them to chase superficial wants instead of facing their core needs. This avoidance creates obsession with pleasure, addiction cycles, and self-referential thinking that fuels depression. The solution is to stop resisting desires, sit with the raw feeling of wanting, and observe what’s actually happening inside rather than acting on or denying it.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
People are prepared to deal with discomfort as long as they choose the nature of that discomfort. The idea of "I can do difficult things" is somehow easy for a runner who is training by running 50 km as a warm-up for next week's race, but cannot go home and have a difficult conversation with his wife. Work isn't always work.
One of the most dangerous things people do is stop allowing themselves to desire things they cannot have. If someone is afraid they cannot achieve something, they fool themselves into thinking that they don't want it. This mechanism leads people to avoid confronting reality directly. For example, instead of accepting "I can't make my parents love me," someone will try to make them feel proud instead.
Desire is one of the hardest emotions for people to resist. They are resisting feeling that emotion. To actually sit down and want something, to actually sit down right now and say "I will only allow myself to desire deeply" and "I don't even care what it is, I want nothing, just to have this feeling of wanting" - most people find this incredibly uncomfortable. Much of the anxiety and distress in modern man lies in desire - desire for the wrong thing, and following what society tells them they want.
Nicotine serves as an example. When someone gets nicotine, the feeling of desire ends immediately. The point is not getting the thing you want immediately. Instead, keep the desire there, look at it all the time, desire it all the time - that is the feeling of desire. The problem is not getting the thing you want immediately. The feeling of wanting is something most people don't want to live with.
The feeling of wanting is uncomfortable because it is one of the few emotional experiences that forces you to admit that you are not in control. You do not control your desires, you do not control your needs, and you do not control gratitude. Gratitude is another area where you do not have control. You must acknowledge something greater than yourself. For people, this completely destroys the identity aspect of "I should do it, why did I mess it up?"
Self-referential thinking, constantly having self-referential thoughts, generates depression and a lot of narcissism. Allowing yourself to feel desire actually begins to undermine your identity. This is why people don't want to feel desire. The question is not about trusting or not trusting desires - the point is to feel them. To feel something. It's not about taking action or not taking action. The question is whether you are ready to feel it all.
If you take a desire, any desire, and ask "What is the underlying need behind this desire?" - for example, "I want pornography" - the underlying need might be "I want to feel calm." Then asking what is the underlying need behind that desire might reveal "I want to feel like I have some kind of connection." All superficial desires are merely strategies to get to some of your core, essential desires. Because we do not want to feel that essential desire, that pain, we only move on to the superficial thing.
Desire is actually the basis of all suffering. Contentment is the absence of desire. Hunger is a disturbance in peace - wanting food. Desire is the biological source of survival. Even an amoeba that encounters a toxic acidity level will want to move away from it. Fear is a desire for safety. Anger is a desire for control and a desire for security. Lust is a very good wish. Even laziness is a desire to avoid hard work.
Buddha taught that if you feel pain, it is your reaction to the pain that constitutes suffering. You cannot control the fact that there is pain in life. Bad things are bound to happen. It depends on how you react to it. When facing a car, you grab your winnowing fork - it's your reaction to it. That's all you can really control in life, and that's the way you react to things, which creates a problem with willpower. Many addicts cannot control their reactions.
Buddha says there is something more insidious than pain: pleasure, which is the opposite of pain, is not something you can control in life. When you wake up and go outside after watching "Love Island," you have no control over seeing the Milky Way galaxy and the positive feelings it evokes. You cannot control the fun in your life. When it comes to pleasure, which is often used as an antidote to pain, it creates a state of obsession. Pain leads to suffering if you don't deal with it properly. Pleasure can lead to obsession if not handled properly. If you cling to pleasure, pursue your desires, and seek to satisfy your lusts, that is where you will lose control of your life.
A meditation teacher was addicted to potato chips and practicing yoga in Rishikesh and Haridwar in the Himalayas. He was practicing "Sadhana," which is a true spiritual practice, not just a Western fad. He really liked potato chips and thought that was something he had to overcome to reach enlightenment. He resisted and resisted and resisted, and one day, because this was in India many years ago, he could not buy potato chips from the store. They used to fry them fresh in the street. There were vendors selling potato chips that tasted very delicious. They would be stale in an hour, but when they took them out and sprinkled the spices on top, they tasted irresistible. One day, the man went to the city, and there was a person frying chips, so he gave in and fell into temptation, and then he felt bad about it.
The teacher told him to stop resisting potato chips. Next time he went to the store, he should buy a bag. If it got old, just buy another bag - it didn't really matter. Stop resisting potato chips; all he had to do was be aware of them whenever he wanted them, and he could satisfy that craving or not. The teacher didn't really care about that. Just notice what happens inside when craving potato chips. Observe what is happening. What kind of satisfaction do you get from potato chips? This is the most important exercise, which is really scary and paradoxical, since the methodology is not always actually relevant. Sometimes you have to reach the top of the mountain. But sometimes, the methodology is awareness.
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