Meditative Self-Inquiry with Mukesh Gupta, June 18, 2026

We met at the Pavilion in Victoria. Mukesh (M) gave a talk on the relationship between desire and fear.

Q: Does being aware of our desire have an action?

M: Yes, silent loving presence has its own action. And it may not be according to my own idea.

Awareness absorbs that energy [of desire] into itself and there’s a real joy now. The dropping of the movement of thought to attain desire is a relief and there’s a releasing of energy.

Krishnamurti: “Happy is the man who is nothing.” Am I happy to be nothing? Can I watch this movement to become something? Because it will inevitably bring fear and sorrow.

I’m dissatisfied with what I am/what I have now and I am believing strongly that if I reach that point I will be satisfied. In this whole process I am moving away from the now, from the present moment. There is always fear because I may not reach that goal. What is happening is that I am missing the joy of this present moment. I am imagining there will be beauty, joy when I reach there. Supposing you reach there, you are satisfied, the mind projects another goal and the whole life is spent in that search. I am never happy.

Absence of becoming is not stagnating. Sometimes we have this fear. The energy of ambition is different: it’s full of conflict. It’s different than the energy of passion. Indifference comes when I am not present. When I am sensitive, I am full of life.

Q: I’ve worked with craving and aversion and see that it’s thought … but beyond the willingness to sit there and experience the craving, I notice that I don’t want attention to be drawn to that. I want to be free of the fixation. It’s not that I can’t tolerate the sensation but there’s this further wish to not be fixated, not have my attention captured.

M: I think that is an important point because desire, fear are all sensations; it’s a movement of energy and what thought is doing is naming those energies, therefore not letting them be pure, pristine. So we can we let that energy of life — the sensation — be pure. The problem comes when I name it: with the naming comes judgement and then effort to do something about it.

This conditioning is so heavy — we are taught to judge sensation. They are just pure feelings.

Can we see the destructiveness of this conditioning? If I’m experiencing any strong emotion, can I remain with it by letting go of this habitual naming process. Then it has its own living and dying process.

Q: This seems like a difficult thing: these emotions can be very strong. One can make that into something to achieve, a goal.

M: That tension that I’m experiencing in the body is no problem; the problem comes when thought is demanding that it should go. If I let go of the control then tension is not a problem

…then that creative energy of life can come forward.

For example anger, that is pure energy of life. In the moment of anger there is no problem, there is no separation, no observer, just an intense energy. There is no mind in that. Later we start naming it, wish we could have done something about it — all that story. When we move away from it, the mind starts to control it.

Q: But the anger might want to express itself.

M: Yes, I can look at if this is a pattern in my life, if thought is the cause of the anger. If you can catch it, then there is no explosion. But there is no me in that. You cannot blame the volcano.

If you live something fully in the moment, consciously, you are finished with it.

Q: When desire flowers and dies away, you said, then there is creativity.

M: Creative means being fully present now. Fully alive. Am I meeting myself as I am without any story. Isn’t that creative? Observing thought, emotion. I see how futile it is to try to do something about it. I am also thinking with creativity — there is a thinking process that is not bound to the past.

Q: I think, “Not this.” I want to be doing something different than what’s in front of me, that whatever it is is not good enough somehow — even though there is nothing better that I want to be doing.

M: Notice that the mind is always wanting to be somewhere else. So it can be observed with a smile. ‘Oh it’s interesting how the mind has been conditioned to be unsatisfied.’

Q: It seems like it’s about being as opposed to becoming.

M: Yes.

The whole burden is mind carrying this belief, what should be, what should not be. That is the central conflict in our life—this judge, sitting inside the head saying you should not be feeling that. And who is this judge? Conditioned thought. If I see that life is moving with all its force … it’s showing up … so can I live that fully? Without a story of what should and should not be.

So we have this tremendous force of desire which is the force of life — can this force be allowed to move creatively, can we make it free? Then it is a river of life flowing with its own discipline. Presence brings its own order and harmony. Then that force of desire is creative …. so that energy of life is of discovering from moment to moment.

• Kathryn Jefferies