By Raphael Awen
Possibly the single most difficult challenge in life is dealing with desire.
Think about it for a moment. Without desire, there wouldn’t be such things as addictions, no need for medications or drugs of any kind. No need for anything really. Sex, food, a new iphone, you name it, all of it no longer sought after. There wouldn’t be any conflict, as that’s all based on desire, so there’s the whole ‘world peace’ issue solved. No more internal conflicts either, so no more need for any spiritual teachers like myself offering ‘more’ in some form or another. There wouldn’t be any possibility of being taken advantage of, nor sold anything, because all that too begins and ends with desire.
What comes up for many of us in feeling this burden of desire that we carry is a desire to return to the place of no desire, to return to source. We can feel a realm of bliss and contentment where we were free from the tyranny of desire. But, to enter this place, we feel a desire to unburden ourselves of this seeming plague of desire that overwhelms us. Did you get that? Desire to exit desire? Argh! Give it an inch and it takes a mile.
The other day, in the evening, I walked down the hill to the beach seawall and stopped in for some ice-cream. It was chocolate mint with crunchy chocolate chunks in it. It tasted out of this world. I knew it was a sugar bomb and of no food value whatsoever, but it was just too good and too satisfying to say no too. Then, the next evening, the idea came back again, and guess what? More chocolate mint. That night at around 3 am, there was a sugar bomb explosion that gave me a headache. Now the chocolate mint wasn’t so much my friend anymore. Lesson learned right? Well, actually, no, because the idea came back around on the third night in a row and guess what? MORE Chocolate Mint, and yet another early morning hangover. Talk about addicted, I couldn’t even try a different flavour.
So, what’s the solution? The idea of some ‘self control’ comes up first with a bit of a punishing energy. “Once in a blue moon as a treat, is fine, but….”. But this too is the voice of another desire, desire wanting to control desire.
When you stop to feel through it, there isn’t a single problem that you have in any area that can’t be traced back directly to the issue of desire.
So, let’s leave this plagued world of desire then, right? To hell with desire. Let’s kill off all desire. What’s left could only be total bliss.
But we’d have to exit nature for sure, because even trees have desire. We’d have to shed the body, because it too is a demon of desire, food, sex, nikes and all. And then what we’re left with is being disembodied spirits who live in the bliss of escape from the pain of all desire. If this is true, then suicide is the greatest virtue.
But, think a bit further here. The question comes up if I would really be free of all desire after death. If I’m still existing, but outside of the body, I won’t be at the ice-cream shop any time soon, but wouldn’t I still be in some realm of desire?
It feels to me like the oneness source that we were birthed out of, the one that we can feel a longing to return to, is actually an energy of discontentment within its contentment. If God, or oneness, or non-duality was so blissfully fulfilled (filled to the full), why did it create outside of itself, beings who would be dependent upon desire?
The answer I can feel around this one and humbly offer as a ‘near as I can tell’ is that God had desire. I know that sounds blasphemous to our conditioned minds, but God wasn’t filled to the full. And God isn’t filled to the full. And God is out ‘godding’ around through you and me in this utter cacophony of desire that has been unleashed upon us.
Why?
Because God in its utter and total fulfillment, felt a need to step outside of itself, which it actually can’t do, but decided to try anyway and provide the illusion of separation from God as a learning and discovery ground seeking to come to know more of its infinite nature.
God is in the 18 year old out trying to get laid. God was in my ice-cream binge. God is in my desire to write this morning. God is in you as you read this.
Here’s the secret though. The separation you feel between you and God isn’t real. It just needed to feel real enough for the experiment to work. What happens to infinite love when it ventures outside of itself, when it lets itself feel the wanting of something more than the most it already has?
We don’t actually know and neither does God, but desire was again found utterly unstoppable here. God couldn’t self discipline itself to stay inside of any kind of safe boundaries. Love left itself up to love. If love is anything, it is free of control. “But, how can that work” we all ask, including the part of me afraid of my next ice-cream binge?
How about this as a solution? What if instead of killing desire, what I actually need is to go deeper into desire? What is it that I really want? What did the ice cream represent that it was capable of representing but not fulfilling? It takes as many ice-cream binges as it takes to figure this out, and love itself can hold every one of them. Even self destruction is held in love, because every destruction cannot escape the love that you are and that you never ever actually left.
Bingo!
To kill desire, you’d have to kill God.The word for this is ‘deicide.’ That’s why suicide is so offensive, it’s actually deicide and suppressing desire is actually fighting God.
You can embrace the utter contentment that you are and bask in its fullness, just don’t think that you won’t have desires inside of that. It’s a crazy thing, but there isn’t any fulfillment in fulfillment in an infinite world. ‘Full’ isn’t ultimately real, only ‘full for now’ is real.
Love wants to explore through you and it can also feel you in this burden it thrust upon you of offloading it’s very desire nature into you. Like a crack addicted mother passing off its craving into an unborn fetus, it can be seen as a tragedy, or it can be seen as love itself being utterly and uncontrollably addicted to love.
We are in a love experiment. Nothing more or less. Even hatred is contained by love.
In SoulFullHeart, we offer a way to get to know and explore the many parts of ourselves or subpersonalities. Here is where your overall relationship to desire can be felt through. Here, we can begin to differentiate each part of us and their relationship to desire. Without this, we remain fused to this civil war of desire inside of us. Check out SoulFullHeartwayoflife.com for more.
Raphael Awen is co-creator, teacher, and facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Visit soulfullheartwayoflife.com for more information and Raphael’s facebook page for more writing.
Divine Self Embodiment Blog (Formerly SoulFullHeart) 