Slippery Desires

I am at a point in life where I view my desires with suspicion.

The masters of the world’s spiritual traditions are always wrestling with desire, appetite, temptation, attachment, and all the other manifestations of our hungry egos.

Once upon a time a tiny striped caterpillar burst from the egg which had been home for so long…  “I’m hungry,” he thought and straight away began to ear the leaf he was born on. And he ate another leaf… and another… and another…

For many years, as a psychotherapist, I would read about all their trials and debates with various tempters, I could respect it as their jam, but I didn’t see how it could ever work for me, or the people who came to my office.

So, Stripe crawled down from the friendly tree which had shaded and fed him. He was seeking more… But nothing satisfied him.

We lived in a different world, embedded in a cultural and economic system so thick and twisted that many are pressured into living whole lives without ever uncovering their most inalienable heart’s desires. We have been trained to believe in the necessity of a thousand unessential things. The hungers of our own bodies – for rest, for clean air and water, for sunshine, for rain,  for food, for love –  have been tightly scheduled, structured, and replaced with what these systems want us to want.

We live our lives negotiating grey-walled mazes under fluorescent lighting, all for a few reward pellets from the Skinner box. We respond to the ringing of Pavlov’s bell over the screaming mandates of our own bodies. We block our ears to our heart cries and then harden our heart to shield against the even deeper longings of our soul.

Then one day Stripe saw some crawlers really crawling. He looked around for their goal and saw a great column rising high into the air.

In a world like this uncovering our desires is a radical and challenging act.

“But what do you want?”

“But what do you want?”

These were often the most mystifying questions I would ask my clients, and myself, and too often “I don’t know” was the only answer.

It appeared that the caterpillars were trying to reach the top, but the top was so lost in the clouds Stripe had no idea what was there.

And a desire, once located and identified, could be its own kind of cruelty. What is the point of wanting something that you might never have?

This kind of unfulfilled hunger is not only painful, but dangerous. It could disrupt our motivation to collect pellets, it might make it harder to get more for later, we could lose faith in the fantasy that we might earn enough, someday, to feel alive.

Discerning our heart’s desires and our soul’s longings from all the conditioned, instilled, imposed and false desires seemed to be the first step on the holy road back to ourselves. So, I didn’t care what all those saints, bodhisattva’s and teachers said. How would we, how would I, ever live a meaningful life without living in relationship to our wants?

To become suspicious of our wants is to notice how easily they are manipulated into serving priorities that are not our own, how regularly our desires attach themselves to things that harm us, how easily they can be tempted to focus on some Great-Come-and-Get-It-Day that never comes. How often have we wanted something, only for it to transform into sand in our mouths the moment we attain it.

He heard a tiny whisper from the top:
“There is nothing here at all! Millions of caterpillars climbing nowhere!”

We must also respect the healthy power of our desires. In times of danger and deprivation they can lead us to safety and resources. But the machinery of our wanting may so easily go haywire and lead us ever deeper into the belly of the beast. Wants can press us into rationalizing the theft of resources and freedoms of others. They can trick us into squandering our labors and resources on cheap calories and shiny objects which will quickly reveal themselves to be worthless junk.

Wanting can also obscure the possibilities for fulfillment that sit right in front of our faces – as we shop for shoes on our devices instead of gazing at the sleeping baby, synchronizing our breathing to hers, and memorizing the transient smell of her soft wispy hair.

Are you safe in this moment?

Is there someone you love nearby or within range of communication?

Is there a window where you can see a piece of the sky?

A beloved pet waiting for play or affection?

Is there a chance to learn a thing or two within reach?

Is there service you can offer to others or help that you might ask for?

If any of these things are present or potentially present in your life now – how might your wants for things that are not present cause you to belittle their sacredness and importance?

If you aren’t safe, fed, housed, loved – if you are in danger or in pain how might your misplaced or misperceived wants distract you from safety, hold you hostage, keep you from nurturance, bind you to pain, or derail the opportunity either for acceptance or liberation?

So, do our wants heal us or harm us?

Yes, absolutely.

Wants are slippery little fuckers and must always be interrogated.

But at this moment, I am struck by how many extinguished and annihilated desires have freed me to love what is in front of me all the more. The overlooked background becomes the precious foreground.

Wholeness was/is always there, somewhere, and sometimes the only way we can access it is by letting our wanting and willfulness die away.

Or perhaps by understanding that all our longings, all our desires are misplaced. Maybe our hungers and wants and yearnings are just a quickening of the central desire to feel ourselves connected to something larger, or as Olivier Clément says – “a flash of the godhead which seizes hold of humanity and draws it along, will not leave it in peace…”

In Trina Paulus’s tale Hope for the Flowers – partly about life and partly about revolution - Stripe the caterpillar is similarly seized, drawn along, never left in peace until he finds himself fulfilling the destiny of all caterpillars.

Maybe the only want that is ever trustworthy is the desire to become what we really are.

Somehow, he knew what to do. Stripe climbed – again. It got darker and darker, and he was afraid.

He felt he had to let go of – everything….  

Until one day.

Sometimes the death of desire is really a beginning.