The ways we relate to desire reveal how we perceive it. Do we regard it as something troublesome we engage with in a struggle for control? Or something we can no longer resist due to a weakness in our character? If we knew the true nature of desire, we would describe it another way:
We try to convince ourselves that with enough gumption and rigid determination, we can both control desire and keep it at bay. Desire neither needs nor uses force, though in the limited constructs of our minds, we believe it is imposing its will on us. The truth is, desire is the bigger will that shows us who we really are and who we are becoming.
Whether desire will have its way with us is not up for argument. What is up to us is how long it takes and how difficult a process we make it. In order to know desire, we must recognize and revere it, place ourselves on its altar, surrender to its wisdom.
This can feel a bit like sacrificing ourselves—or at least the “self” that is primarily identified with intellect and will.
It is, in fact, a moment of ambivalence we come by honestly as the implications of this new life are vast: What is directing our movement and how does our personal will interfere or interact with it? It is through the unexpected contact with desire that our minds finally understand we can either be on top—the user in a mind prison populated with endless projections of how we might find satisfaction or we can surrender, finally, and drop into the body, into authentic desire. We can learn to be used by desire, and this, and only this, is what will free us.
