credit: Loz Flowers

Today’s post is by Evan Hadkins at wellbeingandhealth.net.

I’m a blogger. I’d like to make my income from blogging and a membership course that I plan to open in early October. None of which is happening at the moment. Making my income this way exists only in my imagination, only as a desire. Which brings me smack bang up against the nature of desire and our imaginations.

Imagination can be a drawback – we can pretty much always imagine things being better than they are. Which is a pretty certain recipe for discontent and frustration. And yet building and creating anything means bringing something from nothing: and imagination is vital. Which leads us back to desire. To move something into the world of form means using our imagination (and much else too).

We imagine something that meets our desire. Anything from a sandwich to meet our hunger, to a major public building to meet the desire for beauty, to a membership course to meet others’ desire for greater contentment and my desire to make my income doing what I love. Our imagination is often fueled by desire. This too sounds like a recipe for discontent and frustration. Wanting what we don’t have – surely this is the problem? Surely this will lead to only frustration and discontent?

I think the answer to these questions is one that can be infuriating: yes and no. Knowing we want a sandwich and eating one doesn’t disturb our contentment. Each stage of this process can feel good. From the arousal of appetite, to knowing what we want, to going about getting it and how it feels inside us: all this can feel right. All this in a sense can be experienced as contentment. Or it could be a process of discontent – perhaps we haven’t been paying attention and we are suddenly ravenous and sick with hunger, unclear about what would be good to eat, bolting the food instead of chewing it, and it feeling not so good in our stomach. The whole process can be one of discontent.

It seems to me that it is not desire and imagination themselves that are our problem: it is our attachment to them. If I don’t have the food I want available I can spend lots of time cursing and getting annoyed. And I can stay this way for a long time. This is the attachment. If I can let go this attachment I may have more options – having a bit of something now while I go buy what I want, or finding that what I have will do for now. (I’m not saying that the swearing and cursing is a problem: if it helps us get back to contentment and focus on what we want I think that is OK too.)

This is a simple physical example. But I think it applies to pretty much any desire we have. Whether the desire is emotional (for example, to express our sadness or regret), intellectual (perhaps to understand what makes for a successful blog), spiritual (such as having a sense that we are both ourselves and the universe at once) or social (like a satisfying connection with other people). Whatever the dimension of our life I think it is the attachment to the desire that is the problem. In each case the desire may lead to a satisfying or frustrating course of action. And the only difference is our attachment to the desire.

Let me earth this is a bit in my own situation. Would I like to be owning my income from blogging already? Sure I would. Would I like it to be happening faster than it is? You bet. And at this point I have a choice. Get caught up in my impatience or do what I can. The difference is attachment.

If I get caught up in my attachment I lose the joy of the process. My attachment to wanting to make money doing what I love means that I am no longer loving what I do. All of a sudden I’m not doing what I love but resenting how slowly my blog is developing. My attachment destroys what it is attached to.

credit: manuelaoprea

Instead I can be content and active. When I’m content I don’t spend all my time just lying around. Doing things in tune with who I am are a postive joy. Even working hard at them. Contentment can be a very active state of being. But this requires us knowing what our desires are and appreciating the role of our imagination in meeting our desires. (I think our fantasies of just lying around and doing nothing mean that we have been pushing ourselves – usually because we are attached to some ideal of who we should be.)

It seems to me that, in this world of form, our desires can let us know what we need. It seems to me that our imaginations can help us make this world of form a better place for all of us. Our desires and imagination are good servants but attachment to them makes them into bad masters.

This is my approach to desire and imagination at the moment. I’d like to hear your experience in the comments.

Thanks to Tom for his hospitality in letting me do this guest post. It’s stretched me to write about this – put me to the edges of what I can say. I hope it’s beneficial to you.

Evan Hadkins is a blogger who lives in Hobart, Australia.  He writes about wellbeing and health with a special focus on psychology and self-development. You can enjoy his writing at wellbeingandhealth.net.