The Desire Beneath Every Desire

Welcome back to another episode of the Self Work podcast. And in today's episode, I want to talk about something that I quite literally believe sits underneath most of your human behavior. Something that I have to constantly check myself about, something that I have to constantly general about. And it's about the way we chase money, relationships, status, sex, attention. The way people chase success in a nutshell, we live in a day and age, where you go online and everyone's talking about how much money they make. But if you don't check yourself and this is what this episode is about, you're always going to feel empty even if you get to. And this is something that I had to constantly remind myself. Matter of fact, there's a quote that I read a couple weeks ago that I've been referencing in a lot of the things that I talk about amongst my peers. And it says this, "Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God. In case you don't know what a brothel is, is the house or the home of prostitution." And when you first hear this quote, think about it, "Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God." You might think to yourself, "What the hell does that even mean?" How you bringing God into this? What the spirituality have to do with lust. But the more you sit with it, you realize the quote is not about the brothel. It's not even about sex. It's about the fact that human beings often misread their own desires. We think we know what we want. And that is a scary part. We can confidently say to people, "This is what I want. I want to lamb the guile. I want this finest woman or this finest man. I want the lifestyle, I want the body. I want to be respected. I want followers." But what if the thing itself is not the actual thing? What if the desire underneath is much deeper than that? And what if human beings or us human beings are constantly trying to satisfy some things inwards through an outward means? Promise you guys, I've had to face myself in front of the mirror many times over, even today. As someone who's got a decent amount of followers, you can imagine that sometimes it gets to your head. Make a decent amount of money, you live abroad. People look at you and they're like, "Oh, this guy's so articulate. He's the smartest guy. I love what he talks about. His guy can't say no wrong. Think about one of my most popular comments on social media is, "This guy just never misses." And sometimes if you don't check your ego and if you don't check what drives you, you can really succumb to that and live a very miserable life. So that is what we are going to be breaking down today. And I believe a lot of people that are listening to this right now are living from appetite, not understanding. Right? A lot of your urges, a lot of the things you call ambition, freedom, and even the things you call love. They may not be aligned with what truly is the fact. So nevertheless, let's actually break this down and dive deeper into this episode. The first thing I want to talk about is one of the biggest things I've realized about human beings. Most people do not actually want the thing they say they want. They want their feeling. They believe the thing will give them and it's very important because once you truly understand this, which hopefully you will by the end of this episode, they will actually allow you to make better decisions because there's a massive difference. And let me actually explain what I mean. When someone says they want money, yes, on the surface, everyone wants money. But if you break it down, money is rarely the final desire. Money is what they believe will give them security, freedom, status, choice, relief. When someone says, for example, they want fame, do they really want fame? Perhaps some people do. But most people is much deeper than that. Most people want to feel seen. Important, validated, admired, undeniable. After I told you guys, disabot myself as well when I first started making content, one of the reasons why I slightly lost myself, where if you go back to my videos maybe early 2024, still the same concepts, but the way in which I was delivering the message was because it gave me some sense of importance. I was never alone, by the way, you know, you know, probably to that bracket. Now, coming on the internet and seeing people saying, yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's fact. Bro, spitting makes your head become unnecessarily big. And as I said, if you don't check what your internal desire is, you can very easily use yourself. Even think about when someone says they want a relationship. Do they actually want a relationship? Sometimes yes. But most people, what they really want is connection, emotional safety, companionship, certainty, and I guess this feeling of being worthy of being loved. And this is where life gets really tricky because if you know, identify the real thing you are looking for, you will confuse the object with the feeling, right? And once you confuse the object with the feeling, you become easy to deceive. You can be deceived by culture, your own ego impulses, even the internet, social media in and of itself, because now anybody can sell you the simple. Anyone can sell you the feeling. Believe it or not, a big part of marketing and sales is selling you the simple, selling you the feeling of being worthy, being important. And then they tell you exactly what is that you need, you know, the car, the body, the relationships, the level of success, the image. And because you haven't done the inner work to ask what are you actually hungry for? You become someone who is constantly led by surface desire. Even to go on a bit of a tangent, if you look at looks maxing in of itself and the male beauty standard becoming a thing, think about it. Do you men really care about this whole looks maxing thing or does it really tap into their real deep desire, which is to feel love, to feel wanted, to feel important, to feel seen? This is why I say a lot of people do not live consciously. They move from one appetite to the next. And I want you to actually think about your life for a second. What have you been chasing recently? And I don't mean just physically. I mean emotionally, emotionally is when you really tuck into the deep part. What have you been chasing? Approval? Have you been chasing recognition? Have you been chasing romance? Distraction? Comfort? Achievement? I'm not asking you so the deeper question once you've identified that. What did I believe that thing that I was chasing was going to give me? Because the answer to that question tells you more about life than the thing itself. I have to ask myself this all the time. Do you know what is the deep desire that I want this to give me? When I'm out here going out with some friends and wearing a nice outfit and I'm just sat there looking around. This is why I used to do when I was younger. I'll dress and I'll go out and spend some money. But then here's the thing. I even really want to spend that money. Do I even really care about the place that I'm at? Or do I want to feel a sense of importance? Do I want to be seen? Do I want people to recognize? Same thing when young people find that's cause. I get this every single time. Someone DMs me and says, "Hey bro, I just graduated university. I just got my first job." I'm thinking of financing a Mercedes. I ask them why. He goes, "Yeah, bro, I feel like I deserve it. I earned it." And I'm like, "Okay, financially it doesn't make sense to you." He says, "No, that's the reason why I DM you." And then when you get to the root of it, it boils back down to the same thing. The need to be seen. A sense of importance. People looking at you and saying, "Oh my God, he's got a graduate job and he drives a Mercedes. He must be doing so well." Do you see how you can easily become enslaved to surface level desires? If you don't learn how to check them and this is why I went through an ego death about two years ago. All grace be to God. I'm so happy it happened. I went through an ego death where I started to realize everything that has been driving my decisions came from a need and an undelied want to be seen as important, to be seen as that guy, for people to listen to me and to hear me. And that was because I wasn't paying any attention to myself. I was actually sitting down and reflecting on, "Why is it that I feel devoid of this in the first place?" And then once you get to the root of that and you start working on it and you start developing the spiritual side which we're going to discuss later, you end up becoming someone that, "Yes, I can buy Lamborghini today. Yes, I can approach that woman and get her father's number so I can potentially get married to her." I'm not telling you to just stop things completely. I'm just telling you to not become an animal to your desires and just follow to satisfy an underlying feeling when you in reality try to convince yourself, "This is what I really want but the reality is the underlying feeling is what you are missing." And I want to make something clear before we go further. Desire in of itself is not the problem. A lot of people here, things like this and they assume the message is desire is bad, ambition is bad, pleasure is bad, wanting things is bad. That's not what I'm saying. What effect human being are built with desire, desire moves us and desires are part of being alive. The issue is not desire. It's the fact that most people do not understand what they desire and because they don't understand it, the desire becomes misdirected. And this is where things start to become dangerous. Because now instead of your desire being something that leads you somewhere meaningful, it becomes something that drags you around. And this is what I think that quote is really getting at. The person thinks they are chasing one thing but what they are actually trying to touch is something deeper. You're trying to get or attain a certain level of relief, peace, meaning or even transcendence. They are trying to get out of the prison of their own incompleteness even if it's only for a moment. Which is why unfortunately lust is such a damaging thing, especially when you overly consume or you're overly engrossed in lust. You'll see a guy think about this logically by the way, a guy could be super successful. Let's use young Philly for an example, right? He could be super successful, have probably millions of dollars, millions of dollars. followers. He can actually quote, speak to finance any woman he wants. What happens? Misdirected desire. You do something trying to fill a void. You make a really grave mistake. And sometimes unfortunately you cannot come back. Because most people reach for substitutes. And this is the word I want you to hold on to this episode. Substitutes. Most people live lives that are built on substitutes. You have a substitute for peace. You have a substitute for love. You have a substitute for self-worth. You have a substitute for intimacy. You have a substitute for purpose. And even in the world we live in in this secular Western society, they've even got a substitute for God. And the scary thing about substitutes is that they often work just enough to keep you trapped. And that's why they're so dangerous. Because if you're such a bad thing and you notice it, you would easily get rid of it. But if it gives you a little bit, just a little hit each time. A little relief, a little rush, a little escape, a little bit of validation. Just enough for you to keep coming back, but never enough to make you whole. This is the nature of false satisfactions. This is what keeps the hunger alive while pretending to feed. And once you really see that and I really hope someone listening to this is having their eyes opened. You begin to now understand why so many people are exhausted. Because they are spending their lives living in loops. You're constantly chasing substitutes. You call it fun. You call it ambition. You call it normal. Yeah, this is so lit. But deep down, you're not satisfied. And you know you are misdirecting your hunger. Let's take this a bit further now and talk about why do things like pleasure, lust, and validation often fail us. And it's not because it has no effect. And it's not because they give nothing. They actually do. It's because they can never satisfy deep hunger. Think about this for a second. Maybe a bit explicit. But if you're someone that watches x-rated content, if you're someone that sleeps with women, you know in the back of your head, there's been many times where you didn't have the real desire to do the thing. But you thought that it would give you the satisfaction that you needed. You've convinced yourself, okay, this is the right thing for me to do. This is, this makes a lot of sense. I need this. But in the moment it happens, you don't look at yourself and you're like, I still don't feel good. And a lot of people say this. A lot of people say they want intimacy. But if you be honest and you actually sit with it for long, this often is not the whole story. For most people, lust is tangled up with wanting to feel wanted. And I feel like a lot of women can relate to this and also men. Unfortunately, women fall into this trap where they would sleep with someone because they really want to have this deep underlying satisfaction of unwanted, which is unfortunate. Some of them want it to feel powerful. I really want to dominate someone. You could be doing it to escape loneliness. Some men and women do this where they're so lonely that the moment they meet someone, it's like, you know what, let me satisfy this feeling. I finally got company. And sometimes I realize even speaking to some people, they have intimacy, whether it's sex or watching X-rated content, to temporarily relieve themselves from emotional pain. You may be going through a really hard time in life right now. And a lot of people have experienced this. You've even seen this in the movies, where someone could have a really bad situation or be in a bad situation. And then they end up just hooking on or latching onto someone and just having intimacy with them, thinking that it's going to resolve their problems by actually deepens the pit. And this is why lust can become so deceptive because it presents itself as appetite. But often, if you think about it just for a second, it carries emotion and spiritual weight under it. The person is not just chasing sensation. They are often chasing. And I can relate to this a lot where you're chasing escape, and nearness, and even forgetfulness, just make me forget about my problems. The same goes for status. A lot of people think they want to be respected, but some of them do not really want to respect. They want protection from maybe some level of shame they face when they were younger. If any of you listen to this have worked in corporate spaces, if you've ever seen someone that's so obsessed with power, it's probably because they're trying to outrun the feeling of not feeling enough or not being enough. So now achievement is no longer just achievement. It becomes your armor. And success is not just success. It becomes your identity support. And even being recognized and being acknowledged by people becomes your emotional oxygen. Because if your entire psychological structure is leaning on these things, you will never feel settled. And that is why some people can win a stilful anxious. That's why some people can be admired and still feel insecure. Because the inner hunger was never truly addressed and the only created temporary distractions. And I really wanted you guys to hear that. Most of us are just distracted. We're not healed. And in a modern world, if you look at the world around us on social media, it's just distraction disguised as fulfillment. And one of the reasons I think people struggle to accept that is because it's uncomfortable. What you've been calling desire your whole entire life, maybe a coping mechanism. And now to even build on this because I really want to make sure you guys understand this layer by layer. Why do people often get what they want and still feel empty? This is one of the greatest phenomena of this planet. Think about your life right now. There are some things that you really wanted before that you have right now. And you don't feel anything about it or you don't feel anything towards it. You spend all the time chasing it, thinking about it, projecting onto it, telling yourself once I get this, I'll feel better. And then you get it. Yes, there's a high that comes with it. There's this relief excitement. But then what happens? Life completely settles. Your nervous system adapts and that rush fades. And now you're left with yourself again. Emphasis on being left with yourself again. Because your internal didn't change. And this is where most people get confused because they say, hold on. I thought this was the thing. I thought this is what was going to make me complete. I thought this was going to give me peace. I thought this was the thing that was finally going to fix that restless feeling that I had within me. But because people don't understand the deepest structure of desire, they most of the time come to a wrong conclusion. And your idea, think about this and this is what makes me laugh by the way. Our solution to that feeling of emptiness is what? More. I want to get more. More money. More women. More followers. More success. More experiences. But more of the wrong thing does not become the right thing just because it is bigger. And this is one of the biggest traps in life. You see this everywhere. Someone gets one thing immediately, the goal post use. Someone gets one level of success. The next one becomes a new requirement. Someone gets attention. They need more attention. Even look at social media. A kid comes on the internet wanting to become famous. He makes a stupid video, goes viral. And now he thinks needing more attention is going to give him that internal satisfaction. You also get into a relationship and then you realize they're still an internal emptiness there. But that's the reality. Remember this phrasing that I use every time which is you carry yourself into every achievement. Which means if the emptiness is within external acquisitions may temporarily decorate your life. But they cannot save your life. And I realize this as someone who's been through many weird situations in my life. I always remind myself, Dino, you carry yourself into every achievement meeting that if I don't fix the emptiness within, everything is going to feel the same. That's why when you look at so many people that are spiritually starving, living what they call aesthetically pleasing lives, their lives look so full but their hearts are not settled. They're scheduled, they're calling, they look full but their internal world is shaky. But that's because their soul is weak and I want people to sit with that because living in the UAE for the last three years. I've met all types of people and the types of people I really like talking to are people that made a lot of money at a young age. I'm talking between 18 to 35. I once met a guy, this was like a year and a half ago, he was 28 years old and he was sitting on something silly like 34 million. But this was in crypto and he made that or he made his first million, I guess when he was 23. And one of the things he was basically telling me was he kept saying all of this shit is fake. He kept repeating that all of this shit is fake. It doesn't mean anything. And I kept asking him, what do you mean by that? Because as someone, I'm talking about myself, he doesn't have 30, 40 million dollars. For me, a part of me sometimes thinks, yeah, you know, when I get that, I'm going to be really happy or happy or I should say. But he said no. And he reminds me of the thing that I mentioned earlier, which is you carry yourself into every achievement. If you look at his lifestyle, it was borderline depressing. Sleeps with women consistently. He doesn't care. By the way, he will fly out of women from America pay $10,000 just so she can hang out with him. She doesn't have to pay anything thinking that that was going to satisfy his need for being wanted or for being around people, but didn't solve anything. Because the world will teach you how to upgrade your image far quicker than it will teach you how to understand your hunger. And if you don't understand your hunger, you always lose. The modern world that we live in is created to keep you externally occupied and internally disconnected. If you think about it, the second you feel bored social media, the second you feel uncomfortable, there's some sort of stimulation. The second you feel lonely, there's some sort of content, sometimes unfortunately, is x-rated content. The second you feel insecure, there's some sort of comparison that happens online. The second you feel empty, they tell you to consume something. This is why I say all the time that a lot of people are no longer in touch with themselves. Because you've never been taught how to sit still long enough to actually hear yourself. And when you never try this out and stay still and try to reflect and meditate, your desires remain unexamined. You just move, you scroll, you consume, you pretty much become animalistic. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, you call it life. This is just how it is. And unfortunately again, sorry to make you guys feel borderline depressed. The modern world has become brilliant. They've become really good at marketing and monetizing your substitutes. If you feel insecure, think about it. Someone's going to sell you an image. If you feel lonely, someone's going to sell your fantasy. That's why I only found this such a big industry, a big company I should say. If you feel purposeless, someone's going to sell your status. If you feel spiritually empty, they don't actually sell you things that make you spiritually whole. They sell you things that make you feel intensity. They'll tell you to go Russian to a situation ship. Go do this exhilarating thing. Go travel around the world for the next 12 months. They want you to feel intense. And even if you feel emotionally disconnected, someone's going to sell you some level of stimulation. Everything has become a market. Everything's a funnel. Everything's a product, which is why sometimes when you study, marketing and sales, as someone who has that background, one of the dark things is they know how to sell you an identity. So they won't tell you, oh, buy this product is good. They're going to tell you if you buy this product, it's going to overcompensate for any insecurities for anything you lack. This product here will solve most of your problems. And if you don't know yourself, you'll get sold versions of fulfillment that can never actually fulfill you. And this is why self awareness is so important to me. It is protection. It protects you from being manipulated by your own unexamined hunger. What is your hunger right now? Because someone listening to this right now may be chasing hedonism. You're constantly chasing your desires. And you're never full. You're never satiated. And as I said to you guys, and I'll keep repeating for as long as your desires are unexamined, you're just going to blindly move through this thing called life. And you're just going to think that's just the way it is. And now I want to circle back to what this podcast episode in of itself was about, which is the desire beneath the desire. What is it? Because the answer isn't something as simple as saying every desire is literally the same thing. Human beings are complex, but I do think many desires collapse into few deeper longings. And this is something I've written down. And I'm reading off my notebook now, because I did this a few years ago. And when you realize that these deeper longings are things like peace, meaning, belonging, wholesome, love, safety, transcendence and rest. And above all, I think there is a longing in the human being to return to something real. That's the best way I can put it. Every single thing you're chasing right now falls into one of these longings. You want to return to something real, not something temporary. And a lot of people or a lot of us actually are not looking for pleasure. We're looking for some sort of relief from fragmentation. We are truly tired of being split. Split between who I am, who do I pretend to be. Split between what do I chase versus what do I actually need. And this is why this conversation is much deeper than self-help. This is about the conditioning of the heart. Because the heart knows when it's substituting. The heart knows when it's settling for noise instead of truth. Healing the heart is truly the only way that you are going to reach a level of satisfaction and contentment in this world. And I think many people, if we're being honest, would admit they spend a lot of their life hungry without understanding the nature of hunger. And as I said, if you misunderstand hunger, you're never going to understand the cure. So now I want to go into the spiritual aspect of this podcast episode. Because I noticed this a few years back where, as I said, I was a kid chasing a lot of things. Being around women, silly areas, doing silly things, trying to figure myself out. And I think the spiritual dimension is something that I was never actually taught. Human beings are not just material, by the way. We're not just hormonal, we're not physiological, we're not social. There's a spiritual dimension to all of us. And I think that is why that quote that I said earlier landed so hard, which is, "Every man that knocks at the door of the brothel is looking for God." Because it's pointing to the fact that underneath a misdirected desire, it's often allonging for something sacred. That is why pleasure alone does not satisfy. That is why success alone does not satisfy. Because the deeper part of you was not built to be settled by temporary things. The whole world is temporary in of itself. And if you keep trying to satisfy the deepest part of yourself, with surface level objects you'll keep suffering. And that is the lesson. The heart is not endlessly satisfied by accumulation. The soul, in of itself, in Arabic, the Kuleh Rohe. It's not settled by applause, people clapping for us, people telling us, "You know you're that guy." You can be entertained and still be empty. You can be admired. You can be the most followed person on the planet and still feel empty. Because the absence is much deeper. And I think a lot of people deep down, right, if you look at even fitra, predisposition, the way that God created our soul and heart. A lot of us deep down know this, which is why sometimes when you talk to people, you can know that their soul is yearning, is looking for something purposeful. After the noise, the pleasure of socializing, after doing everything under the planet, you're left with this strange feeling. And this feeling, and I've had this many times in my life, that tells you there must be more than this. And we try to suppress that feeling. Or should I say, society teaches us to suppress that feeling. And I'm not here to put my conspiratorial hat on and throw something out there. But it's very convenient how they'll drown you in hedonism, x-rayed content, entertainment, constant social media usage to try to make you suppress that feeling. So you don't ask that question. And I think that feeling is one of the most honest moments in your life because it is the moment where all of the substitutes stop working for a second. And that silence tells you something very deep. It tells you that this is not it. We weren't built for this. You know, your heart is not asking for billions of dollars. Your heart is not asking for five, six women by your side or five, six men on rotation if you're a woman. And the person who listens to that voice, believe it or not, will probably live a different life, completely transformational life to the person who keeps drowning it out. So with all of that being said, I really hope that you've enjoyed this episode so far. I want to make this very practical. As per usual, what is the self work podcast episode without some practical stuff? So I want you to write down the following. The first thing I want you to really sit down and think about is, what have I been chasing recent? Be honest. No one's going to read this. No one's going to see this. Have you been chasing money? Recognition? Sex? Validation? Attention? Distraction? Achievement? What is it? Write it down. Next to each one that you've written down, I want you to write, what did I believe this would give me? I'll give you some examples. Did you think it would give you security? Did you think it would give you belonging? Peace? Self-worth? Relief? Or even a sense of being enough? And now the third question is the deepest one. Is this thing that you've been chasing actually capable of giving me what I am asking from it? This question alone has helped me so many times because sometimes the answer is no and the painful part is you knew all along. So I need to just ask yourself, what is this thing actually capable of giving me? The answer will reveal a lot. Second exercise I want you to do is, I want you to think about the last three times you felt a really strong pull towards something, whether it's a person, an urge, a craving, a purchase or distraction. And I want you to ask, what was I feeling right before that? This is something I use every single time. I'm 95% clean most of the time, 5% were human. But think about this. Think about the last three times you had a really strong urge to do something. We talked to a person, DM a girl, sleep with a girl, sleep with a man. You wanted to make a purchase that you knew you shouldn't be making. You wanted to indulge in a craving or a distraction. What was the feeling right before that? Was it loneliness? Or was it loneliness? Restlessness? Being ashamed? Being bored? Anxious? Emptiness? Unseen? Because if you can identify the emotional states beneath the impulse, you begin to understand the function of the thing you reached for. The third one. I want you to write one sentence that starts with, what I am hungry for is something basic. Maybe it's peace, maybe it's clarity, maybe it's direction, maybe it's God, maybe it's self-respect. I want you to write this down because if you cannot name your deep hunger, you'll keep finding it in the wrong things. And lastly, to end this all, and I really hope you guys are doing this sincerely. Ask yourself this. What in my life is a substitute right now? What am I reaching for that gives me a moment of relief? but leaves me empty afterwards. That question alone can change your life if you answer it honestly. So with all of that being said now, I sincerely hope that you guys have benefited from this episode and I want you guys to understand that as humans we are all longing for something. But if you long for something and you satisfy it temporarily, you will never feel full and whole long to them. The only thing that can really and truly fill that void is the remembrance of God. So just remember one final question. What am I really looking for and what is the desire beneath this desire? And I'll leave this episode there. As per usual, you have enjoyed this and you think someone could benefit from this, share it with them. And if you do want to give me my flowers for this episode because it has been transformational, feel free to message me on Instagram or TikTok. Otherwise, I love you guys and I'll catch you in the next episode.