Detangling Desire
I’m not available for that”, he said. We were sitting in his car outside my apartment, after spending the evening together. We were talking about desire. What I wanted. And what he wanted (or in this case didn’t). We’d been dating for a couple of months, and I could feel the longing in me growing. For deeper, more intimate, more revealing sex, honesty, and connection. Of course, that evening, the truth that got revealed was what I knew all along. The door to his heart wasn’t open to me. I went inside and cried. Because I wanted so much to be granted access. I looooooove access — to be able to know and connect in those inner realms. But in this case, nope, the door was clearly closed.
The next day I was talking to an old friend. She recounted something she once heard (ironically something I’ve been known to say to clients). It’s ok to feel the longing. Allow yourself to feel it fully.
Oh yes, old friend desire.
For the past month, that’s what I’ve been doing. Unhooking desire from its object and feeling it directly. From all I know, this is one path out of obsession, craving, and wanting without having. To allow for desire, to feel it fully, and to experience its essence without any intermediary — as raw sensation and power. (The other path being to give yourself completely to the obsession, until it is done with you and spits you out the other side — I’ve gone that route before too). The practice of this first path is like the finest needlework — thread by thread seeing the ties that attach desire to a person or object, and tracing them back to their source.
A note here. This isn’t about making the things we desire wrong. Or denying the truth of wanting something or someone in particular. It’s about becoming intimate with desire in its most potent form
Why am I drawn to this person?, I asked myself. What do I enjoy about them? What do I like in the connection between us? I sat with those questions and allowed the answers to reveal themselves. I kept what was revealed — the qualities, the experiences, the feelings I loved. Oh yes, I want all of those… and more. I felt the pulsing, alive quality of wanting them. But like separating wheat from the chaff (or some similar analogy that doesn’t denigrate chaff), I slowly released “him” from the picture. He was an intermediary. A beautiful one. But as he was less and less the focus, I could sit with the immediacy of my deepest desires. It’s a very sensational intimacy. Try it. It just may be a reason we place unavailable people and things between us and it — to soften the intensity.
(This all has me think about the process of concretizing and liberating. How we’re in a constant cycling between the two in life. Bringing things into form to get to know them, to experience them in flesh, and to know ourselves through them — with all our love and sight, frustration and delusion. Mmm…. it’s sooooooo good. Hot and tumultuous and gratifying and confusing. And then the release, the death, the return to essence and relating without form. Duality and non duality. Form and emptiness. Samsara and nirvana. The beauty of both sides of the coin. And the wisdom of not getting stuck in either. Or getting stuck, then getting unstuck, and getting stuck again — and remembering we’re all on this great ride of life, learning and experiencing. I love it all. And I know any wisdom I have comes from being willing to experience it all.)
Relating to desire without form has few words. But you can feel it doing its work just beneath the surface. So it takes patience. If you OM, you know what it’s like to sense a spot that’s not yet contactable but is slowly rising up with each stroke. Or if you meditate, you may have experienced thought as a bubble of burgeoning energy before it pops through the surface and takes shape in consciousness. It’s like that. You can’t see it, you can’t yet touch it, but you know it’s there and it’s real. Such is true when desire exists without form. It’s very much alive, but underground, cooking. Often here we want to rush it into familiar appearances. Just like we want to stroke fast & hard towards climax, or slip out of open awareness and into ‘figuring things out’ with our minds — it’s more comfortable to our habituated selves. But if you can, stick with it. That’s how I sat with my desire for some weeks.
Then, last weekend, I was inside painting the walls of my new office, and I could feel the energy pushing to emerge. I had the thought to start noticing who was around me on my daily walks. Simply to open and notice and see what happens. On Sunday, after 48 hours inside with my paintbrush, I put my shoes on and headed towards the beach. 10 minutes later I was at the crosswalk, I turned my head to the left, and saw him. A beautiful man. I laughed a little — sometimes these things work fast. He walked ahead of me, but eventually turned and said hello. We had a great chat. And a few days later a sweet date in the park.
Don’t get too excited. He isn’t the answer to all of my desire. (And really that’s not the point). He was, however, a reminder of the power of sitting with desire in its raw form, allowing the object of obsession to disentangle, and discovering a direct intimacy. And how that frees desire to move us in a deeper, more aligned way.
Last night, the man I had dated came over for dinner. It was our first evening together as friends. I could feel the familiar arisings of longing. That returning to form. It felt good, in a very human way. As I’ve said, I like being in my flesh, to feel the draw of connection to another in theirs. But when he left, I could also release him, and return to intimacy with my desire, remembering, and listening to where it wants to take me.