What people say
I can honestly say that, for the first time in 50 years, I’m learning how to just be. How to relish the present moment, which, magically and mysteriously, unlocks the door to the treasure house that is the rest of my life.
- Jennifer Green, Salem, Oregon
From the moment Jon and I connected, I had this deep experience of loving presence and complete trust. Something bypassed my mind and my ability to figure things out, and communicated directly to my heart and soul that I was safe and in the right place. There was a creation of power in our relationship that he honored and witnessed as being mine. It was my power. I had the experience of being wonderfully, beautifully powerful, in the most loving, energized way.
- Laura Lind-Blum, The Idea Midwife, Waterbury Center, Vermont
Jon can help you recognize where you are, and become more clear. My work with him has not been about plotting out my future, it has been about helping me come into deeper relationship with myself so that next steps unfold easily and effortlessly.
He creates a safe, spacious container for you to go as deep or wide or high as you’re capable of in any given moment. It’s a matter of him being able to see the facets and help me make them real in me.
- Sandra Leader, Carmel, CA
My feelings changed from, “Quick, fix me, I can’t stand how I feel, make it better, hurry,” to, it’s not about hurry, and it’s not about fixing, it’s about staying where you are and getting more and more and deeper and deeper sensations that this is okay. You’re fine, this is okay.
It helps me reframe experience. I don’t see anything that’s happening quite the same as I’ve ever seen it before, because my viewpoint has been enlarged. There’s more, there’s peace, there’s joy, there’s love, there’s health, there’s everything.
- Layne Young, artist, Salem, Oregon
When Desire is Undistorted
October 4 2011
Desire has a rather bad reputation. Especially in today’s economic climate, desire tends to be equated with greed. After all, wasn’t it the desire of the banks and the stock market (and the people they served) that first inflated and then brought down the housing market and started the recession? Isn’t it the desire of individuals for more that feeds the mountain of consumer and government debt?
Yet like anything, there are two sides to desire. While it’s certainly true that desire can cause struggle and suffering, it’s also true that desire has great creative potential.
Look back at your own experience, and you’ll see times when desire played each of those roles for you: sometimes distorted and destructive, and other times creative and joyful.
You’ll see times when you were certain that you had to have something — a physical thing (such as an iPad or a new pair of shoes), or an experience (such as a vacation or a spiritual retreat). Those times were probably painful and filled with struggle, especially if you felt that there were reasons why you couldn’t have what you desired.
Yet you’ll also see times when your desire moved you to create something powerful, or to give in a way that returned far more to you than you could have imagined — or even to purchase a thing or an experience that provided real joy for you.
What’s the difference between the two — and what does it take to open to a deeper experience of creative, powerful desire?
Distorted Desire
The desire that causes pain and struggle is distorted. This distorted desire leads you to look outside yourself for satisfaction and validation — seeking externally for a realization of wholeness that can only come from within.
You’ll probably feel a strong belief that the thing that’s desired will create happiness, and is even necessary for your happiness. From there, it’s a short step of apparent logic that without it, you must be unhappy. Even though that logic is obviously flawed, most people fall into the trap of believing it at least some of the time.
This painful desire often involves resentment and envy. As one client said, “I’ve struggled with my knowledge that other people have — as I saw it — ‘been able’ to do things that I didn’t think I could do for one reason or another. I’ve hated that sense of envy — and hated myself for feeling it — but of course that only makes things worse.”
Undistorted Desire
On the other hand, undistorted desire is a clear expression of who you really are and what’s most deeply true for you. Then desire becomes a movement of that truth into action — into realization. Even (or perhaps especially) when it’s as simple as savoring a good piece of chocolate, the realization of this desire is an expression and an experience of life at its most joyful.
“There’s something childlike about desire when it’s not driven by fearful thoughts about need or angry feelings of envy. It’s open-hearted. It’s ... relaxed. There’s no sense of panic or greed or grasping.” My client paused, and then went on slowly, feeling her way through what she was realizing. “It seems to me that when desire moves naturally in this way, it’s not possible for it to be unmet. It’s not possible for me to want something that I can’t have. That sounds ridiculous, but it feels very true.”
What you desire is what you are
It’s not ridiculous at all, because what she’s describing is the felt experience of being what she wants, and wanting what she is.
In other words, what you most want is what you already are — and it’s what you’re most capable of providing for others. It may be, in fact, what you’re called to provide to others.
The distortion arises when you believe you have to seek outside yourself for what you want.
Okay, obviously you’re not going to find a piece of chocolate by looking inward. But satisfaction of the deeper desires — desires such as those my clients describe for love, connection, joy, community — comes from within, not from outside. Ultimately, we all know that — even when we don’t want to.
And the fearful, grasping, distorted desire for something external comes when the inward experience is apparently lacking. As one client said, “I feel terribly empty inside — and I’m trying to fill that with food. But it’s really an emptiness arising out of my refusal to look inward, to meet myself, to be fully okay with whatever is happening for me.”
Later, that same client told me, “I’ve longed for a sense of community. I’ve craved a feeling of belonging, of being part of something. And so much of what I’ve wanted has been related to that: a relationship, the opportunity to go on retreats, and so on. But what I’m seeing now is that the feeling of belonging has to start with me. I have to belong to myself. As I see myself as whole and complete, not needing some external experience of community or relationship to prop me up, then ... then, it’s like a miracle: the community I’ve desired all my life suddenly starts showing up. And it’s even more miraculous: I’ve noticed recently that some of that community is actually forming around me — because of me, because I’m anchoring it or leading it in some way. And that just blows my mind!”
In meeting herself fully and unconditionally, in realizing her own truth, and in beginning to live from that truth, she’s experiencing the joyful, creative power of undistorted desire.
“It’s the soul’s duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.” Rebecca West, pen name of Cicely Isabel Fairfield (1892-1983), English author, journalist, literary critic, feminist, and travel writer.
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