A Practice in Self-Study: Charting Your Course in Rod Stryker's The Four Desires
How does Tantra help us find our purpose?
With his significant influence on how tantra is understood in American culture, Rod Stryker has curated a wealth of resources and practices available to newcomers. Based on Stryker’s Yoga of Fulfillment course, The Four Desires is for inexperienced and experienced practitioners alike. Through a blueprint of svadhyaya, or self-study, this guide acts as an umbrella to realizing the crucial role desire plays in all life. We must write, experience, and spend time with ourselves to move toward the acknowledgment and fulfillment of our interconnected and universal human experience.
Why read The Four Desires?
The Four Desires serves as a roadmap to not only life’s purpose but also to fulfilling our intentions linked to desires that address a different facet of the soul: dharma (life purpose), artha (what you need to fulfill that purpose), kama (pleasure), and moksha (spiritual needs). All of these desires must be met and addressed to achieve our purpose, but often we will spend more time working toward one when setting an intention aligned with our purpose.
Stryker offers terminology through a framework that allows readers to learn through daily practice. He provides several definitions of tantra, including the ancient definition “to weave,” which Stryker elaborates as “the philosophy and techniques that allow us to weave the richness of spiritual experience and the fabric of everyday life into a single vibrant tapestry.” Tapping into this shakti, or “power of soul,” is vital to moving beyond the limitations outlined in tantric practice.
The most essential thing to do, Stryker reminds us, is to act: “The simple truth is that real fulfillment requires action.” The first step is accessing your Dharma Code, which guides all four desires and “conveys in very clear and direct language the life course that your soul aspires to, the one you were meant to follow.” Next, to manifest a result-centered intention, our sankalpa, Stryker reminds us “marrying desire with determination is the key to making a sankalpa truly effective.” We are led through how to identify our sankalpa through meditation, word mapping, and clearly outlined criteria to ensure its effectiveness and achievability.
The remaining chapters, including one on Stryker’s Creation Equation, touch on how and why our sankalpa can be achieved or fail through studying ourselves, the way we move through the world, and entangle ourselves in patterns, beliefs, and influences. But when we decide to turn from them and let go, we forge a new path and tap into intuitive practices. Stryker offers numerous narratives from clients and his own experience to demonstrate this process’ broad applicability and personalization for the individual.
What practices do The Four Desires offer?
Writing Practices: Nearly every step requires intensive writing sessions, from articulating the Dharma Code to mapping out sankalpa to addressing resistance to practicing non-attachment. A stack of papers or a notebook is ideal.
Meditative Practices: Stryker emphasizes the value of silence and the need for meditation, which reminds us that “life is indeed a gift and that it is indeed sacred.” Key meditations assist in defining intention, increasing power, allowing to let go along the path, and accessing contentment.
Asana Reflections: Stryker offers an asana that reflects its contents after each chapter. These deep, contemplative, yet short essays call upon what is needed to enter the pose physically and energetically.
Obstacles and Barriers: Reaching a goal takes time and effort. Stryker outlines a few ways we can assess and overcome resistance to achievement, through the amount of resistance and how to lower it, how intensity matters, and how to identify our self-limiting beliefs.
Why find–or return to–The Four Desires now?
With the vernal equinox not far behind us and the days lengthening, now is the time to engage fully with both our purpose and desires, articulating and growing toward them just as the rest of the natural world bends toward and follows the sun. Stryker writes, “There are no boundaries between material and non-material reality and between past, future, and present.” Take this opportunity to embrace the process, fearlessly committing to each moment in order to “[...] change your future by changing yourself.”
Listen to Stryker’s conversation with Vira Bhava Yoga Founder Kelly Golden and Director Leanne Horvath on the Yoga of Resilience podcast for more in-depth insights about tantra and its lineage.