THE ROOT OF ALL DESIRE
“Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes.If it were always a fist or always stretched open,you would be paralysed.Your deepest presence is in every smallcontracting and expanding,the two as beautifully balanced andcoordinated as bird wings.”
- Rumi
At the root of every desire is the desire for ourselves, our true selves beyond name and form.We may believe that something external - a person, an object, a substance, a certain pleasurable or painful experience - can satisfy our desires. Secretly what we desire, of course, is that sense of relief, rest, satisfaction, which comes from a desire being fulfilled.
For when we finally get what we want, or what we thought we wanted, we are no longer in want, no longer caught up in the discomfort of lack. We are, finally, present to ourselves, no longer seeking outside ourselves for satisfaction, but feeling the satisfaction inherent in our own presence, that sense of rightness, of being home, of no longer needing anything external to complete ourselves.
We are no longer split in two, as the 'one who desires' over here, divided in time and space from the 'desired one' over there, but whole, at rest, content, One. The burning over, we rest in our own nature, temporarily. But as we all know, the satisfaction doesn't last for long. It is an illusion that desire could ever end desire. The system simply reboots, and a new desire burns, and a new search for relief, ad infinitum.And so allow desire, first directed outwards into time and space, projected onto objects and people and places, to turn back into itself, fall intoits own Source.
Come to know desire more intimately, as a longing for presence, for home.All desire is really for the Self, then. So do not try to numb or extinguish all desires (self-mortification), or seek the end of desire through trying to satisfy ever conceivable desire (self-indulgence),but embrace desire for what it is, embrace it fully in the present moment, and simply decouple it from the 'content', the narrative, the future, the story.
Honour the burning in the belly, chest, throat, feel the raw sensations there, without judging them, labelling them, or trying to make them stop. Feel the burning of life itself. And let the burning be embraced. Be the home for it. See the desire as a lost child, longing for love, begging to be included, not extinguished; held, not healed; accepted, not abandoned.You are burning for yourself, friend, and, when you stop to take a look, you are never actually far away.
You are closer than any object, any person,any substance, any experience. This is true ful-filment; being full of breath, filled with life, close to yourself. Forever One with what you always desired.Let every desire guide you back to the source of all desires - You.
- Jeff Foster
