Yes, Joy. I have thought about the pain issue too, and also witnessed it more than once in friends who were dying from cancer. It’s just not possible to know until you are there. I am not good with pain, I’ll admit. But I think of the process of dying as also a process of living, not just being on one’s death bed – so I desire to live fully as long as I can. I have days, like today, when due to having a cold, I feel little desire at all! Is this a hint about how I might feel at the end?
But dementia is more than the ego disappearing. The brain is atrophying – shrinking – so the gaps between the different parts of the brain get bigger and bigger until they cannot be crossed. It is the ultimate in disconnection – and horrifies me. Recently, my husband and I watched an amazing film called “Alive Inside” (http://www.aliveinside.us/#land) which looks at how music can help someone connect again inside. Worth watching if you can.
Ah! But I am interested in Eros. With Eros there is an object – or something you want more contact with – something that brings a sense of deeper meaningfulness when there is contact. I don’t think it is just there being an “object” that creates craving. I think it is the tightening, the constriction around the object that is the experience of craving. What I want to try to find out is: can there can be an “open” desire for more? This seems to be what Rob Burbea is talking about in his 2 talks on Opening the Dharma of Desire. I will try to send you these two talks.
I am thinking about my inheritance of naming – I lost what there was of it when I left my country of birth. And I mostly had to source my own names as a child the best I could – my parents being too absorbed in their adult lives to teach me much about the beautiful natural world we lived in. I do remember somehow finding out that the name of the amazing flower I had come across in the woods when walking on my own was a trillium! I knew the name of the American Robin and the Cardinal. Once a semi-tame Raven came to stay for a while in our garden. My first boyfriend was a nature lover – and he taught me a lot. I think that is partly why the American nature writers/poets like Annie Dillard, Mary Oliver and Pattiann Rogers feel special to me – I hear the American landscape and it’s wildlife in their words. When I first came to this country, I found myself in London with pigeons and sparrows. I do have a special love of Lapwings which were one of the first British birds I learned to name. Only in recent years have I really gone to great efforts to name the wild life around me, bringing great joy.
Yesterday evening I went, as usual, up to the meditation room at the top of the house and meditated in the semi-supine position. This is a position I learned from Alexander Technique that not only helps align the spine and improve posture, but releases and slowly stretches out the psoas muscle – the hip flexor muscle deep in the body that contracts as a result of fear and can remain contracted – for years or a life time in many cases! I do it every day if possible. As I lay there, using the time to meditate, I suddenly felt what I can only describe as pools of vulnerability in the hip sockets. The fear of the last week moved out and in poured the deep vulnerability it was hiding. It made me tremble a little and feel almost queasy, but it also felt so good – open and released again, at least for the moment.
I have been researching Jacques Lacan. Pretty dense material! He is supposed to have asserted that all desire is the desire for recognition. Hmmm…… I think a lot of desire might have that underlying motivation – but all desire? I guess it’s how you define desire. I will try to come up with a response to this at some point.
I, also, no longer feel this particular longing in the same way. I think this is because I am increasingly more able to feel connection with other people.
Can we desire what we don’t “need”? Or is that really “craving”? I feel I want to differentiate craving and desire, and will try to do that when I get around to writing on Buddhism. I think I agree about the “other” as essential to desire, at least to erotic (in the broadest sense) desire – but what does “other” mean? I very much feel there is a universe of “others” within me as well as without. Desire is so much about the imagination. Confusing one’s “own” desire and that of another has arisen often as an issue in the women clients I have worked with. I have spent a lot of time helping them find their own desire voice. What do I actually want? That is the question I keep coming back to. As for creativity, it certainly is a desire for me – and I also feel it as a need. But I have been wanting to differentiate between need and desire. It that possible? Let’s go back to old Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. What I really want I suspect would come in the very top layer, Transcendence.
I can’t imagine being forced by another to desire anything – but – you might be forced “against your will” not by “anyone” external to you – but by parts of your inner psyche. The Stoics don’t consider this possibility – certainly there is no sense of how powerful it can be. But I don’t want to feel “enslaved” by inner forces. Maybe that is inevitable – but needs to be examined and moderated I think.
Thanks for engaging, Guy. This is an interesting idea – that the feelings of shame, defeat and humiliation can become part of desire. They kind of get stuck together. Shame is often around the lack of control. “I should be able to control myself.” I am used to “sitting with” my feelings. I know I can’t control them, but I can observe them / become aware of them as they arise and eventually pass away – I don’t have to immediately act (react) on them. However, I do believe that I can control my choices and actions. It is when this kind of control is somehow taken from me that the other feelings kick in. And I can watch them – but somehow it doesn’t help because the bird has flown, so to speak. It only really happens around this particular desire for me. Maybe when I was much younger it happened around sex and, of course, the childhood complusive stealing I mentioned. And sex and food can both be talked about in terms of appetite, can’t they? The reason I am doing this enquiry is because I believe desire is actually important – it motivates. We need our desire to create and to engage with vitality in the world. I am going to post soon about my efforts to explore this particular kind of desire. If you feel able, your own experiences are always valuable.
Yes, Joy. I have thought about the pain issue too, and also witnessed it more than once in friends who were dying from cancer. It’s just not possible to know until you are there. I am not good with pain, I’ll admit. But I think of the process of dying as also a process of living, not just being on one’s death bed – so I desire to live fully as long as I can. I have days, like today, when due to having a cold, I feel little desire at all! Is this a hint about how I might feel at the end?
But dementia is more than the ego disappearing. The brain is atrophying – shrinking – so the gaps between the different parts of the brain get bigger and bigger until they cannot be crossed. It is the ultimate in disconnection – and horrifies me. Recently, my husband and I watched an amazing film called “Alive Inside” (http://www.aliveinside.us/#land) which looks at how music can help someone connect again inside. Worth watching if you can.
Ah! But I am interested in Eros. With Eros there is an object – or something you want more contact with – something that brings a sense of deeper meaningfulness when there is contact. I don’t think it is just there being an “object” that creates craving. I think it is the tightening, the constriction around the object that is the experience of craving. What I want to try to find out is: can there can be an “open” desire for more? This seems to be what Rob Burbea is talking about in his 2 talks on Opening the Dharma of Desire. I will try to send you these two talks.
I am thinking about my inheritance of naming – I lost what there was of it when I left my country of birth. And I mostly had to source my own names as a child the best I could – my parents being too absorbed in their adult lives to teach me much about the beautiful natural world we lived in. I do remember somehow finding out that the name of the amazing flower I had come across in the woods when walking on my own was a trillium! I knew the name of the American Robin and the Cardinal. Once a semi-tame Raven came to stay for a while in our garden. My first boyfriend was a nature lover – and he taught me a lot. I think that is partly why the American nature writers/poets like Annie Dillard, Mary Oliver and Pattiann Rogers feel special to me – I hear the American landscape and it’s wildlife in their words. When I first came to this country, I found myself in London with pigeons and sparrows. I do have a special love of Lapwings which were one of the first British birds I learned to name. Only in recent years have I really gone to great efforts to name the wild life around me, bringing great joy.
Yesterday evening I went, as usual, up to the meditation room at the top of the house and meditated in the semi-supine position. This is a position I learned from Alexander Technique that not only helps align the spine and improve posture, but releases and slowly stretches out the psoas muscle – the hip flexor muscle deep in the body that contracts as a result of fear and can remain contracted – for years or a life time in many cases! I do it every day if possible. As I lay there, using the time to meditate, I suddenly felt what I can only describe as pools of vulnerability in the hip sockets. The fear of the last week moved out and in poured the deep vulnerability it was hiding. It made me tremble a little and feel almost queasy, but it also felt so good – open and released again, at least for the moment.
I have been researching Jacques Lacan. Pretty dense material! He is supposed to have asserted that all desire is the desire for recognition. Hmmm…… I think a lot of desire might have that underlying motivation – but all desire? I guess it’s how you define desire. I will try to come up with a response to this at some point.
I, also, no longer feel this particular longing in the same way. I think this is because I am increasingly more able to feel connection with other people.
Can we desire what we don’t “need”? Or is that really “craving”? I feel I want to differentiate craving and desire, and will try to do that when I get around to writing on Buddhism. I think I agree about the “other” as essential to desire, at least to erotic (in the broadest sense) desire – but what does “other” mean? I very much feel there is a universe of “others” within me as well as without. Desire is so much about the imagination. Confusing one’s “own” desire and that of another has arisen often as an issue in the women clients I have worked with. I have spent a lot of time helping them find their own desire voice. What do I actually want? That is the question I keep coming back to. As for creativity, it certainly is a desire for me – and I also feel it as a need. But I have been wanting to differentiate between need and desire. It that possible? Let’s go back to old Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. What I really want I suspect would come in the very top layer, Transcendence.
I can’t imagine being forced by another to desire anything – but – you might be forced “against your will” not by “anyone” external to you – but by parts of your inner psyche. The Stoics don’t consider this possibility – certainly there is no sense of how powerful it can be. But I don’t want to feel “enslaved” by inner forces. Maybe that is inevitable – but needs to be examined and moderated I think.
I am really interested in this “Rebel” and will think more about it. Is there a way other than to either resist or capitulate?
Thanks for engaging, Guy. This is an interesting idea – that the feelings of shame, defeat and humiliation can become part of desire. They kind of get stuck together. Shame is often around the lack of control. “I should be able to control myself.” I am used to “sitting with” my feelings. I know I can’t control them, but I can observe them / become aware of them as they arise and eventually pass away – I don’t have to immediately act (react) on them. However, I do believe that I can control my choices and actions. It is when this kind of control is somehow taken from me that the other feelings kick in. And I can watch them – but somehow it doesn’t help because the bird has flown, so to speak. It only really happens around this particular desire for me. Maybe when I was much younger it happened around sex and, of course, the childhood complusive stealing I mentioned. And sex and food can both be talked about in terms of appetite, can’t they? The reason I am doing this enquiry is because I believe desire is actually important – it motivates. We need our desire to create and to engage with vitality in the world. I am going to post soon about my efforts to explore this particular kind of desire. If you feel able, your own experiences are always valuable.