Desire overpowering the personality

The company one keeps determines one's character; a person tries to join the group where one can freely express one's innate nature. Man, by nature, is prone to cater to the desires that arise within or the urges that are prompted from without. Very often these are deleterious. So people ruin themselves by giving them the chance to overpower their personality. Consider the influence that good association can exert. A length of string is a worthless piece - none adores it or consider it useful. But when it associates itself with a few fragrant flowers, then women decorate their hair with those flowers and devotees place the garland on idols they adore. A block of stone in a public square is neglected and abused. But when the stone receives the company of a sculptor, it is transformed into a charming statue of God and installed in a temple to receive the homage of thousands. So satsang (holy company) is very important to grow morally and spiritually.


Baba talks about the company one keeps, so we went regularly to the center, we join a group where we can freely express one's innate nature. They were singing, and so did we. If we realize that we are all the same self, it is every time when we are singing an adventure.

Man, by nature, is prone to cater to the desires that arise within or the urges that are prompted from without. Very often these are deleterious. So people ruin themselves by giving them the chance to overpower their personality.


What is he telling us in those words? Desires can be deleterious. They ruin themselves by giving the desires the chance to overpower the personality. How they overpower the personality?

After we didn't go back and Baba said in Darshan, it means it was standing the air, even if he doesn't tell us in words, when it is like that standing in the air, we have to see it, but it is seeing it and he said, 'it is perverted, you have to get a divorce'. I had no idea what he meant with perverted, but it was clear, nevertheless, something was wrong. 

We didn't go back and after some time my ex was standing in a ruin, he was wearing a short red woman skirt and a black fur jacket, and he said to me that is all I could get in garage sales. That was in the dream. 

We had to get a divorce, and we had met in the ashram, therefore, it was kind of difficult to accept, as we thought in the beginning that it was ideal, and it turned out to be everything else but ideal.

In these words of Swami he is telling us what happened. It is the desires overshadowing the personality. 

We never know a person that well that we can get the big picture.

What we know is that he wanted to always to go to garage sales, it became not only a habit, but an obsession, and I usually had to drive and when I noticed that I was tired of it, he didn't stop or he didn't allow me to stop, I didn't want to go anymore. It was fun as long as the daughter was small, we got her toys like that, but on a certain level it began to get ridiculous.

What he is telling us here that the desire overpowered the personality, because there was the ruin, it ruined himself and it ruined the relationship, it felt like an addiction and when we met again years later at the ashram and we went in the village, he was looking for something, there was that feeling of no limitations coming up and at the air, I was not aware of it before. It was like craving for cheap stuff we could buy, it had the feeling of an addiction to it.

He is telling us that good association can have a great influence. The problem was solved, when we didn't go back. 
But he went on with garage sales and lived at the basement of his sister and she told us, one day she went downstairs, and she found piles of cloths and stuff he had piled up from garage sales. 

He told me that he has that much stuff, he doesn't need buying anything anymore for the rest of his life and he seemed even proud of it.

He went every year to the ashram, it didn't help in that sense, he went on with it. It didn't help the relationship either. And it looked ridiculous as he was wearing women stuff. 
It felt like a shopping addiction. 

When we arrived here at the beginning, he told me about a rummage sale nearby and I told him, that I have enough rummage, I don't need more of it. It seemed to be the only thing on his mind.

He said he stopped with it, because he has no more room for it. In my country we don't have that and we were never tempted into it, we never went again and it was strange after twenty years to listen to that again. As for me everything was new and therefore, exciting to experience it to know what it is, I didn't realize that we got into addiction with him, I only noticed that something was wrong, when he couldn't stop anymore and he got very upset when I told him that I was tired of it and I didn't want to drive with him to those sales on a regular basis anymore. Today I cannot even look at it anymore, I developed an aversion against it, because I realize only now what huge problems it has been for us.


I don't want to go and look at that old stuff anymore, I feel sick just thinking about it.


Consider the influence that good association can exert. A length of string is a worthless piece - none adores it or consider it useful. But when it associates itself with a few fragrant flowers, then women decorate their hair with those flowers and devotees place the garland on idols they adore. A block of stone in a public square is neglected and abused. But when the stone receives the company of a sculptor, it is transformed into a charming statue of God and installed in a temple to receive the homage of thousands. So satsang (holy company) is very important to grow morally and spiritually.

He was standing in a ruin, but that it means the desire overshadowed the personality, that we get aware only when listening to Swami's words. 

I never really liked the garage sales, I went with him, because he wanted to go, and I noticed something was wrong, but that is over twenty years now and only now we get aware of it. 

And that is how we get the answer, and it took such a long time I just have to write it down.  
After I wrote him that we have to get a divorce, he ignored it, and it took seven years to finally get that divorce, until he signed the divorce papers.

After the divorce, it got even more difficult, because I still didn't know what it was. Baba said in the dream to use his words and that is how I began to think it with the help of the thought for the day. 
And that is how we get the answer in his words. Usually I listen just to a thought for the day, it is enough text to think it over and then we find the answer in his words.
As he is telling us here, it was not only not about ceiling of desires, but the desire was overpowering his personality. 

It felt ridiculous when we arrived here and the only thing on his mind seemed to be a rummage sale. 
I didn't realize how sick it was, but in the meantime, because we got it to the point now with listening to his words, when I see the sign garage sale, I get rather sick than having the desire of going there. I get usually anyhow easily sick when I smell old stuff, that is the reality and memory of garage sales and I would never go again with him to garage sales. It was that much in his mind, as soon as we arrived here, the only thing he mentioned was a second hand sale. 

It was ruining our life, it is as he is telling us here, it was overpowering his personality. We had met years ago at the ashram, we got divorced a long time ago, and we are still trying to get aware of it in trying to understand it.

There was even a friend of his telling him that there is no divorce, and we were not long ago at a dinner and we were both invited and his friend said, it was nice to see us together again, and I told him no, not so nice, he never cared about us, he never called. 
My daughter wanted to come back, that is why we are living here again, but we have not much contact with her father, otherwise, the only thing he was sharing with us was crap. He was once more in the dream, he was dragging behind him a cart of old iron crap, he was a crap collector. A rubbish collector, collecting crap, he is dragging behind him, it has something to do with the ego as Swami explained in a different speech. If the ego is involved, it is usually not done with just getting aware of it.  

But that is what happens in thinking it over, he is telling us here that desires can overpower the personality.
He said it as well in the dream of the daughter, that her father is stupid, he doesn't know what he is doing, he is destroying himself and if she is going back to him, he will destroy her as well. 

And that is our life, we couldn't go back and we came here together to make sure, she is okay, and we have to work it out and try to understand it right and make sense to it. 
  
It took years until we began to think it over.
And it grows on us, we get more familiar with it and by thinking it over again in time it probably makes sense like it had never been in question, we just know what it is if we listen regularly to his words. 
That is how we learn that desires can overpower the personality and we have even made the experience of it.