Message #29564

[guest88]

Steve,
I can't find the post where you mentioned suppressing urges, but this thread and that post are connected.

Here is where I am at in GTWA that speaks directly to us,

II:21

"When sense pleasures are routed by self-control, their forces are at first inhibited, suppressed within. The devotee's continued spiritual actions then cause the Self to transmute them to a finer state for the sensing of higher bliss. For example, if a person is greedy and eats too much, he may suffer from indigestion; if by self-control he abstains from overeating, he is initially only suppressing greed. But if he transmutes his greed for physical food into greed for continuous communion with God, he does not destroy his excessive appetite but changes it from an evil agent into a medium for good.

When man begins to slay his temptations and desires for material comfort, he should no condemn himself as a cruel tyrant, a joy-killer! Nor should he label the Divinity within him as the Devourer of sense pleasures! As the devotee gradually destroys his evil inclinations and feels desolate without those pleasures, he should console himself with the thought that his pleasure-loving experiences have not been destroyed; they are in the process of transformation, to be lighted through meditation from the plane of misery to the joyful plane of God-attachment.

The devotee is therefore justified in transmuting his evil desires. He does not suppress or kill them, for that would make him a mental fossil. On the contrary, it is through the thirsty mouth of transmuted desires that he drinks the immortal nectar of God-Bliss!"
-Paramahansa Yogananda