Desire is the point of everything

I was recently listening to young woman broken by grief at the loss of a dear friend, someone she described as a second mother. She was grieving the very real physical loss of someone who had affected her life deeply, how she longed to spend just a little more time with her. It truly was her heart’s desire. This is the power of love and loss, the power of grief. No matter what we might believe spiritually, we miss the persons flesh and bone and being. We are physical beings after all. As she shared she spoke about her own spiritual beliefs. She spoke of something I hear a lot of these days, a kind of modern take on spirituality. Something you often hear from folk who claim to be spiritual but not religious. She said that she couldn’t understand why she was finding the loss so hard as she knew that we are spiritual beings merely having physical experiences and that what really mattered was spirit. I remember thinking to myself, ouch. I think so many of our troubles stem from rejection of our physical being, that somehow this is less than spirit. I often witness the opposite trouble by the way, that which sees us merely as physical beings, “lumbering robots” to quote Richard Dawkins, a view which sees no spirit animating our physical being. Both views are problematic to me and in some ways deny what it truly means to be human. For me our lives are animated flesh, brought to life by the one loving spirit. When we lose that which we love, a part of our body and our spirit breaks with this loss. I have thought this for many years now as I have experienced love and loss, as we all do as I have grieved, as we all do. The last 12 months have revealed this ever more strongly as I have had the privilege of sharing with others in “The Colours of Grief: Our Shared Experience of Love and Loss”. I know that love lives on, it is eternal, but when we lose someone we love dearly we grieve the loss of their physical being, how we long to see them, to hear them, to touch them once again. We should never decry this very real experience. We are animated flesh, we are the spirit expressing itself in lived reality. We all love, we all long and we all desire.

They say it's not about the destination, but the journey itself, that is the gift, the blessing of our lives. It is called the beautiful journey, the ultimate gift of life. Now while I accept this as truth, I do not see it as the whole truth. You see it’s not just about our individual journeys, our singular adventures, but who we journey with. We do not sail the ship alone. Some are with us and stay until the end, some are there at the beginning, but leave along the way; some join us for a short while and then they are gone and many others journey on where we are long gone. So yes it's about the journey but it's more than that, it’s about who we journey with. We do not sail this ship alone. To me this is what it means to truly live religiously, to live our spiritual lives with others. And each time we lose one, we journey with, our heart breaks and we grieve their loss. For each matters.

By the way we don’t go anywhere. Life truly is Groundhog Day, we journey round in circles and eventually return home with treasure. You see the journey is truly about learning to be at home where you find yourself, being grounded in our truly human beings. As Wendell Berry wrote:

“A Spiritual Journey” by Wendell Berry

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home.

This is why we desire. We desire to journey, to commune to become a part of and to belong, to be at home in the ground of our being. Desire is a vital aspect of our humanity that sometimes the spiritual inclined do not wish to speak of. Or the scientifically inclined try to reduce or some try to buy and sell, treat as a mere commodity.

As Eduardo Galeano observes in “Walking Words”

“The Church says: The body is a sin.
Science says: The body is a machine.
Advertising says: The body is a business
The body says: I am a fiesta”

We are living breathing beings, animated and in my belief infused by spirit. What we experience right here right now is not merely a physical experience, it is the spirit manifest, alive. Yet we want to deny this, to reduce its meaning, to deny the sacredness of our all too human being.

So often desire is decried and yet desire is the point of everything. I have discovered that it is desire that animates our all too human being, perhaps it is desire that is that spark of the divine in our human being, in our flesh and yet so often it is the thing we fear the most because it cannot be controlled, it is an ungovernable beast that overcomes our rational and reasoning minds, its meant too. We are not just machines, lumbering robots. We are the body electrified, enthused with joy, wondering and suffering too.

I have come to believe that our bodily desire comes from that spirit within us. This longing and yearning for communion, for connection, for completion, for fulfilment and wholeness flows from our essence. It is heard in our first cry when we are born, the cry of the newborn to be held and loved. It is found in the yearning of young lovers to experience one another as one. It is found in the urge to adventure, to discover new lands, new scientific understanding and all creative expression. It is that longing to be loved and cared for, that creates family and community and it is this that cries out when we lose something or someone we love, when we grieve. It is desire that urges us to connect with a larger reality, to that which is greater than our singular selves. It is that power that is greater than all and yet present in each. Perhaps desire is that aspect of the Divine in our humanity.

I see clearly that desire is a deep longing that comes from our souls, the essence of our human being. Sadly it would seem that the spiritual traditions have not always recognised this. In fact many of the traditions, or at least how they have been understood have suggested that our desires need to be curbed and or controlled, that we should be ashamed of them.

Desire is often associated with greed, lust and egoism. Desire is often considered dangerous to the individual and society. It comes from this idea that fundamentality there is something deeply wrong with our human nature. The idea that we are fallen creatures. The idea it appears is that to receive enlightenment and or transformation that desire must be transcended. This saddens me, as I have found that it is through my real human experiences that the spirit comes alive, love expressed through our human lives and it is our task to bring that alive through our human lives. To me this is what the gospels teach in their essence as do other traditions in their essence too. As Diarmuid O'Murchu observed in “The Transformation of Desire: How Desire Became Corrupted and How We Can Reclaim It”

"In this analysis religion breaks loose from the chain of life. It becomes an instrument of death and destruction. It undermines that which is central to all spiritual growth and development. The desires of the heart are precisely those that keep us rooted in mystery, forever reminding us that the Spirit lures us forth into the transformative power of the new. This is precisely what is happening in every one of the parable stories in the Gospels, the seminal narratives offered by Jesus to break open the meaning of the Kingdom of God.

"Jesus took desire seriously, and wishes all Christians to do the same. We engage desire, not primarily by adopting a moralistic and legal coding, but by working co-operatively for the right relationships that facilitate liberation and growth at every level of life. Striving to get relationships right is the heart and soul of the New Reign of God. And it is not merely human relationships, but right relating at every level from the cosmos to the bacterial realm. Creation is forever held in the embrace of a relational matrix, and from that foundational source all relationships find their true place and purpose."

...The Lure of Divine Love keeps on calling me, thankfully I rarely refuse the call these days...

Desire comes from our essence, our soul, our being. It is desire that leads us to connect to be more than our singular selves. It is from desire that we respond to the suffering of others. It brings us to life and makes us feel alive. We are born to live alive and then to let go of life when our time comes.

Desire is the vitality of life, it is our longing for completeness, it’s what brings us together and forms community, family, friendship and human love. We are not spiritual beings merely having a physical experience, our physical experience is the spirit dancing in life. This desire, this human yearning, is how the spirit is known. I’m with the Sufi’s who saw yearning as God’s desire to be known. We ordinary humans are the spirit incarnated in life. Actually I suspect that all life is an expression of the Divine love. Desire is the point of everything.

Do not be afraid to express your desire it is the spirit come alive. Through our desire we become all that we born to be…Fully alive…

I’m going to end this "blogspot"  with the following poem by Rene Daumal, “I am Dead Because I lack Desire”

"I Am Dead Because I Lack Desire" by Rene Daumal

"I am dead because I lack desire;
I lack desire because I think I possess;
I think I possess because I do not try to give.
In trying to give, you see that you have nothing;
Seeing you have nothing, you try to give of yourself;
Trying to give of yourself, you see that you are
nothing;
Seeing you are nothing, you desire to become;
In desiring to become, you begin to live.”

Let us desire to become, let us begin to live