TRANSFORMING DESIRE

Life has unmistakably drawn me to Denver, where a strong contingent of contemplative Christians share life, work, and ministry together at Mile High Ministries.  I've committed to living amongst the underprivileged at their affordable housing community in a volunteer capacity, engaging with the residents and helping out with their various programs.

It hasn't taken long for the subject of desire to emerge in conversation, the very issue I've struggled with so much this year.  A colleague posed a very important question: how do we combat restlessness and anxiety when we consider the families we serve in light of the broader world with its widespread injustice, inequality, and so many other things that need to change?  We recognize that anxiety isn't the proper response, but don't want to embrace a theology of idleness that looks out at the very real horrors of the world with an apathy masked as glib acceptance.  

While it's possible a sort of placid or blissed-out contentment can emerge as an antidote to the restless anxiety we experience in the face of injustice or the myriad wrongs we seek to address, this response isn't non-duality or non-attachment.  It's merely the opposing polarity of restlessness and a mere hair's breadth away from cynicism.   It's still based, much like the definition of desire I posited in my previous entry, on a scarcity model, and its reactive expression remains rooted in possessiveness. 

What, then, is the alternative?  I previously wrote of self-emptying and an outward, rather than inward, focus, and I want to explore this further.  For while desire is customarily experienced from a place of lack (whether selfishly or selflessly focused), this is only half of the story.  The other side is the insatiable desire of abundance, longing to lose itself filling up all the deep, dark places of want - like water rushing to the sea.  The universe itself is fueled by the motion of this desire, seeking to rediscover the initial unity that was lost when symmetry was broken and the world of form burst forth into existence billions of years ago.  This desire isn't possessive or covetous, but transcendent, and within human consciousness this transcending reality is experienced as joy - an inner aliveness that cannot be touched by circumstance. 

We have the capacity to become conduits of this joyous desire, in which there is no apathy but endless desire to relate.  It's the end of all anxiety and restlessness and the beginning of love working itself through us free of condition or restraint.  In my experience, the only way this joy can perpetually manifest in a person, in the heated moments they need it most, is through mysticism.  The deepening transformation it provides allows this abundant, transcendent love to flow through a person via relationship, through genuine understanding and the dance of distinct energy between people, and over time becomes the life-changing medium itself.