Anatomy of Desire

the long version

Anatomy of Desire won't help you get what you want, but it will help you want what you get. It will help you understand desire and its purpose in your life. It will help you discriminate between true desires and false ones, and it will help you relate to your desires in a way that reduces suffering and increases joy. Most importantly, it will help you know your Heart's desire and to follow it. Anatomy of Desire is essentially a book about how to be happy regardless of your desires. It points out many of the myths about desire, which keep us tied to our desires and the suffering they cause. So, it is also about spiritual freedom, or liberation, which comes from letting the Heart guide us instead of the ego. It is ultimately about becoming a lover of life rather than a desirer because these two things--love and desire--are at odds, and we must choose between them. What do you really want? Do you want what you want or do you want love? "When you see that the "I" is the ego and not who you really are, it puts wanting in perspective. Wanting is forever coming out of the ego. If you give your attention to it, you will be chasing one desire after another. Once you can separate yourself from this "I" and see how undiscriminating, random, and constant the ego's wanting is, you gain some distance from your desires, and there is freedom in that. Your desires no longer seem like they belong to you, and that makes them less compelling. What makes the "I want" so compelling is that it is happening inside you, so you identify with it and believe you do want and need that to be happy."