Is this what I desired? This question haunts us throughout our lives. Most of us live in the hallucination that we generally get what we desire because we feel we richly deserve it.
Every effect in this world has a cause. When a person faces adversity, an extroverted person will look for the cause in the outside world. The greatest problem we are facing today is that we do not look within. An agitated mind loses clarity and does not see the cause within. We are pre-occupied with our outer personalities. Extroverted nature makes it difficult for us to investigate our weaknesses and take corrective measures.
Unpleasant experiences in life drive a person introvert, starts looking within. The moment a person looks for answers from within oneself, their mind becomes peaceful. They develop clarity and try to find out the cause for the effect. This sets their thinking. With a strong intellect they come to an understanding that ‘you get what you deserve, not what you desire’. Such a person is peaceful.
Most of us live our entire lifetimes blaming the whole world when we do not get what we desire thinking that we have been denied what is rightfully ours. The mistake here is very simple if we were to objectively look at it. We have not analyzed ourselves well enough to know what we actually deserve. If we could do this, we would know what to expect from ourselves and there would be no unhappiness in this world. After all the root cause of all unhappiness is “EXPECTATIONS NOT MET”.
Vedanta advises us to employ our intellect to control and direct the desires to our chosen ideal. We will then prevent the desires from developing into a yearning or craving and direct them towards an aim or aspiration in life.
In the words of Richard Chenevix Trench ‘The stone that is fit for the wall is not left in the way’.