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In many conversations I have had about writing this blog and exploring desire, there comes the question of definition:  What is desire?  I don’t feel any urge to answer this in a definitive way.  I have already said that longing, for me, is not desire – and yet I know it is an important element of some desires.  It just does not equate with desire for me.

However, I am always interested in what others say about this question.  A friend recently sent me this quote, which is from “Abraham Hicks” who is a channelled teacher.  I have nothing to say at the moment about the value or not of channelled teachings, but I found the quote interesting:

We would describe the sensation of desire as the delicious awareness of new possibilities.  Desire is a fresh, free feeling of anticipating wonderful expansion.  The feeling of desire is truly the feeling of life flowing through you.  But many people, while they are using the word desire, feel something quite different. Desire for them often feels like yearning.  For while they are focused upon something that they want to experience or have they are equally aware of its absence.  And so, while they are using words of desire, they are offering a vibration of lack. They come to think that the feeling of desire is like wanting something that they do not have.  But there is no feeling of lack in pure desire.

I recently wrote a “found” poem on desire as a verb.  A found poem is one that is basically something the poet has found, and turned into a poem just by how it is arranged.  This poem I “found” in my much used, very battered paperback Thesaurus, which has been a companion for about 55 years. I have hardly changed what was there on the page and it is still in the same order that it was.

To Desire: Roget’s Pocket Thesaurus, 1963

 

To wish, wish for, care for, affect,

like, take to, cling to, fancy.

To prefer, have an eye to, have a mind to.

To have a fancy for, have at heart, be bent upon.

To set one’s heart (or mind) upon,

covet, crave, hanker after, pine for, long for.

To hope, etc.

To woo, court, ogle, solicit, fish for.

To want, miss, need, lack, feel the want of.

 

Note how Roget finishes with lack.  And there is no inclusion of anything like what Abraham Hicks describes as “pure desire”.  What is this “pure” desiring?  What jumps out for me in the Hicks quote is the word “expansion”.  This word resonates with my own sense of deep desire – that it is an opening to, rather than a closing around, the other, whatever that other may be.  This quality of expansion takes desire out of the realms of craving and of lack.

 

 

The poem below is named after a wonderful Wim Wenders’ film from 1987 called Wings of Desire.  Filmed in black and white, it tells the story of an angel whose task is to support mortals in need on the streets of Berlin.  There are many deeply touching moments in this film, but the crux of the story is that the angel falls in love with a trapeze artist and renounces his angelic status to become human so that he can love her more fully.

I have two children, first a son and then a daughter.  I feel utterly blessed in this.  I still remember the powerful desire for children that gripped me in my early 30s.  Each time it was different.  The first time there was a viseral tension in it: must have!  But the second time was different.  As the poem shows, I felt my heart calling out and a definite answer came back.  After her birth, I never felt the desire to have a baby again – although I love babies.

Wings of Desire

For Alice

 

Standing in weak winter sunshine

on the draughty floorboards

of our small tied cottage,

I closed my eyes and silently

called from my heart,

“Are you there?”

 

To my surprise, you answered

with a soft feather touch on my face –

my desire for you touched

by your desire for me –

this body – this life.

 

For days after,

in solitary moments,

I felt you fluttering around me –

and then a great calm.

 

It was no surprise

when the sickness began.

Had you been a boy,

your name would have been

Gabriel.

 

This is a picture of me about 4 years old with a kitten.  My father took slides and this one was so old and underexposed that I had to have it professionally dealt with to reveal even this much detail.  But I like it.  To me it shows that 4 year old Mary knew how to care – and that my care was acceptable.

To care – to take care – to care about – to care for…

Since I was a small child I have had the desire to care. This deep desire is found in many living beings – maybe all. It interests and disturbs me that when I express it, this desire to care has been sometimes met by others with a mixture of ambivalence, diminishment, distrust, even mocking or by suggestions that it is somehow inappropriate, excessive, misguided or a bit sad – rather than it being accepted as just the care that I desired to show.

My desire to care has, at times, been associated with a peculiarly negative image of mothering – as if I must be a smothering or insensitive mother, more concerned with my own needs and desires than the needs and desires of those I care for.  I am sorry to say this has mostly come from men – rather than other women.

Yes – my experience of being cared for at birth and through my childhood was not ideal.  The experience of Lemn Sissay’s was far worse, and yet it is clear that he cares deeply and has made a very positive impact with his caring.  Yes – we can displace our need for care by attempting to care for others, not always meeting their actual needs – and it is essential to become aware of this.  But is this all that is going on when others push back, belittle or criticise our care for them?  Of course it is more complicated, involving individual histories and circumstances.

But is it sometimes that they are expressing a fear of the whole realm of care?  Fear of their own vulnerability and need for care?  Their own lack of care and caring?

To care is the foundation of love and of compassion.  We need to talk more about caring, not just side-line it to the arena of care for the ultra-vulnerable – the very young, elderly, disabled and dying.  We need to examine our own relationship with care.  Do we care?  What do we care about?  How do we care?  Are we caring enough?  How easy is it to just not care?

We need to urgently look at our own lives through the lens of care – to begin to find the best ways to care for ourselves, each other and our whole environment.  Each of us needs to more identify with Mother Earth – to challenge the misogynistic negative mother image that is insidious in Western culture and the relegation of care to “carers.”

It is often said that one needs to learn to take care of oneself first before being able to care for others – and there is some wisdom in this.  But my experience is that it is more a case of slowly learning to include myself in my caring – to continue to care deeply about others, but also include myself in that care.  Sometimes I need to focus more on caring for myself, when it clearly is not happening enough – but also to keep desiring to care about everything.

Contact is fundamental:  “The Eros of reality begins with touch.  There is no life without contact.  Without touch there is no desire, no fulfillment – and no mind.”¹   I will go more deeply into Eros and touch in another posting.  Here, rather, is my opportunity to discover how much I have really absorbed the basic Buddhist teachings on desire – after trying to understand them for almost 30 years.

In Buddhism they speak of “sense contact” as the primary experience that can lead to desire in terms of grasping, clinging, attachment and aversion – all of which result in the kind of suffering Buddhists call “dukkha”.  Sense contact, in itself, is not a problem – that just happens by being alive.  The problems come in what the mind can do with it.

Nature has designed living beings to move towards what is “pleasant” and move away from what is “unpleasant”.  This is necessary at the base level for survival and, in itself, there is not a big problem in this – except you find you cannot simply do it.  Human life is hugely complex, full of obstacles to our desire for our existence to be pleasant.  Even simple organisms cannot escape their own demise.  And don’t assume sensory pleasures will always be comfortable either.  If we eat too much lovely food our stomach hurts.  If we attach to a lover, it pains to part.  The beautiful rose blossom opens and soon falls apart and drops to the muddy ground.  The things we want – desire – will often be uncomfortable at times.  I want to meditate – I have a strong desire to do so – it could be said that I really love it – but sometimes it causes my knees to hurt.  Many of the things in life which I have truly desired, my children for instance, have caused me great heartache at times.

Some unpleasant experiences need to be gone through.  The task is to be with them rather than turn away and close off from them.  This is not easy.  It’s a kind of “swimming against the tide” and is why there is such a strong emphasis on practice in Buddhism.  You need to practice – lots – with the small, everyday unpleasant things, so that you can stand a chance of being able to open to and embrace the big unpleasant things, like dying.  The reward for being able to do this is peace of mind – for some, a very deep peace of mind indeed.

Change is the only thing you can count on.  If you embrace impermanence, there can be a great deal of joy – even, and sometimes especially, in the changing itself.  Each changing has its own pace and is in consort with every other change connected to it.  If you resist the changing – and its pace – that is what the Buddhists call “dukkha” – and dukkha is distinctly unpleasant.  The Buddhist scholar and teacher, John Peacock, once described it as “like slowly rubbing your arm against a brick wall.”  That really spoke to me.  You would think that, due to its ultimately unpleasant nature, we would not indulge in it the way we do.  But our minds are restless, always seeking to grasp the pleasant, however we view this, and push away the unpleasant.  Nothing is ever quite right – it is always “unsatisfactory”.  “Craving” is often defined as a sense of “unsatisfactoriness” and it is.  But this gives no sense of how deeply unpleasant it can make our minds and lives feel.  Dukkha is what happens when desire becomes “craving” – a sense of constriction around the experience of wanting and not wanting.  Instead of opening to what is, there comes a closing and tightening, leading to all kinds of tortuous mental and emotional activity, which can feel very visceral indeed.

This is only scratching the surface of Buddhist practice and philosophy – but it is enough for now.  There is certainly a lot of craving in many desires.  My question here is:  Is it possible to desire without craving?  What does that feel like?

¹ Weber, Andreas (2014) Matter & Desire, An Erotic Ecology; White River Junction, Vermont; Chelsea Green Publishing; p 16.

A week ago, I started awake in the early hours with fear flooding my body.  The realisation was that, when my mother was my age now, she was probably already in the first stage of the dementia that claimed her life 10 years later.  As her sister also fell victim to dementia, there were some greater than average odds that I might too.  I don’t have much time!  The fear has stayed with me in smaller and larger waves – and fear, as I well know, can be paralysing.  But I keep moving and watching the fear moving in my body and mind.  I spoke about the fear to a few trusted others.  Naming it out loud helped, but it felt very vulnerable.

I was due to give a poetry reading a few days later, and had decided to read Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day”  as my closing offering – a tribute to her.  She has had no small effect on me over the years – all positive – and she met her own death very recently.  Mary Oliver’s poems seem always to speak to my own deep desire to connect with life – to be fully awake and attentive to the ordinary joys endlessly available in this unfathomable world I find myself in.  It’s the simple and invaluable gift her poems give to anyone willing to receive – and in this poem she reminds us, Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Andreas Weber, in his book, Matter & Desire, An Erotic Ecology, devotes a whole chapter to Death.  He claims that Aliveness must be able to fail if it is to be truly alive.  Only because of death does life become creative.¹  And then, Stubbornly insisting on life can result in the opposite.  The frantic desire to ward off death can actually invite it.  Conversely, if you wish for life you must be prepared to welcome death…Perhaps we can speak of a biocentric tragedy, of a rift that cleaves the living heart and makes it bleed.  But this division alone is what makes space for desire, it frees this desire, this longing to reveal itself in snowstorms of hawthorn blossoms, in the swifts’ joyous arcs through the evening air…²

Of course – the beauty, poignancy and aliveness of impermanence – cherry blossoms.  Why else write poems?

But I have desires about how I want to die, too – as did Mary Oliver.  In her poem “When Death Comes” , she says she wants to be able to step through the door full of curiosity.  Ah!  I desire to do same!  To die the death of the fully alive.  To open to death as I would to a lover, not a thief.  Fat chance if I succumb to Alzheimer’s!  Death is not a thief, but dementia is – slowing taking every meaning from you, crumb by crumb, connection by connection, brain cell by brain cell.  It angers and frightens me.

I wrote about my mother in Nothing Special: “My Mother’s Kitchen”

My mother’s kitchen was her kingdom.

She ruled there as despot and sage –

copper bottomed saucepans rubbed to a shine

with vinegar and salt –

cupboards with Lazy Susan circular trays

that turned around bringing

spices from China and India,

condiments from Italy and Japan,

spinning around into her easy reach.

 

Dishes were rinsed from right to left

and into the dishwasher –

but not the lead crystal

or the bone-handled knives.

 

She cooked with concentration,

subtlety and sincerity.

It was her poetry

and her pride.

 

But she was left walking through it

one heavy autumn day

with a spoon in her hand.

Looking at it, she turned to me and asked,

“What is this for?”

 

I can, and will, keep exploring and opening to my deep desires for as long as possible.  And I can also feel that death, itself, makes this space for desiring.  But how will my fear of dementia impact this?  What is this for?

 

¹ Weber, Andreas (2014) Matter & Desire, An Erotic Ecology; White River Junction, Vermont; Chelsea Green Publishing; p 50.

²Ibid; p 60.

 

 

For me words are a way of touching.  I am touched by words and I offer words as a means of touching others.  Naming is at the heart of language and infants are enthusiastic about it.  Naming locates and separates out – a way of framing.  It invites associations, images, feelings and connections.  Names are magical – even the most simple ones.  For me, naming isn’t about boxing in or defining, which is just limiting and alienating.  Naming creates a magical space around something or someone that can allow perception to deepen and become playful.  Our minds want to name – but so do our hearts.  There is a pleasure and some kind of desire expressed in naming.  It creates “the other” that we can then try to somehow touch and to know, despite them being always intrinsically unknowable.  In the deepest sense, there is something erotic about naming.  That is how I have viewed the naming of birds.

Using a book, I have named flowers in hedges, fields and woods – always experiencing the pleasure of naming.  But flowers want to be seen – they are dressed for it – and they stay still.  Birds have always moved my heart – even without being able to name them – and I have felt a ridiculous thrill whenever I have been able to name one.  For the most part, they do not want to be seen by the likes of us, and only want to be heard by us in order to tell us to go away.  Their colours, songs and calls are for others of their own kind.  I have found books of limited use in naming birds.  To name, you have to know where to find them first, know what details to observe and then get them to show themselves enough to observe those details.  Naming by ear is a wonderful skill that hugely increases the naming possibilities when out walking, but is not learned from books.  I can identify a few birds by sound – the ones that are most present in my immediate environment: house sparrow, wood pigeon, swift, magpie, crow, blackbird, buzzard.  But there are even sounds that some of these birds make that I can’t distinguish.  You have to repeatedly put the sound and the sight together.  Best to have a teacher and guide.  For me, that has been Nigel.

Nigel always insists you have to earn your birds.  His ability to name birds by sight and by sound outstrips anyone else I have personally known.  He is definitely not interested in naming as simply a way to define, and thereby limit, anything.  I feel he appreciates the mystery, the undiscovered and undiscoverable of everything in nature – while still being insatiably curious.  This made him my perfect teacher.

Early on, Nigel taught me to begin learning to what he called “jigsaw”: to try to name a bird by the flying silhouette against the sky.  This opened me up to the sheer beauty of bird shapes in the sky – how they fit there just so.  I realised I already knew some basic jigsaws, mostly the same birds whose sounds I knew, and I began to take more interest in the aerial shapes around me.  I was very pleased with this growing ability, a part of the pleasure in naming.  Then I stayed in a campsite south of London and saw a shape in the sky heading for a very tall tree – a shape I felt somehow didn’t belong there – not a proper part of the puzzle.  I busily jigsawed away.  Was it a pheasant?  No, flying too high – wrong shape.  Was it a corvid?  Definitely not.  It was when I heard it that the penny slowly dropped.  I had seen my first parakeet in the British skyscape!  Pleasure is too tame a word for my feeling at this naming.  Here are just a few of the naming experiences that Nigel has enabled for me:

Naming With Nigel

 

Dipper disappearing under a bridge –

later bouncing on a boulder in the River Teign.

Fieldfares in a field (where else!).

Many Brent Geese on a sand bar.

Red Kite infiltrating the Dartmoor sky.

Siskins whispering in woods.

A pair of Shoveler Ducks sieving at the edge of a lake.

Ring Ousel on a granite gatepost.

Crossbills, like flames flickering

On the top of tall pines.

Reed warblers repeating themselves in reeds.

Meadow Pipits undulating across the moor.

Oystercatchers and Greenshanks in shallow estuary mud.

Cattle Egrets strolling through a water meadow.

Wrens shouting their songs out from bushes and hedges.

 

I grow more confident in my naming.

Here are some I have done on my own:

A Chiffchaff chiffchaffing on a hawthorn tree

just a few feet above where I am lying

in the grass on a Dorset hillside.

A flock of glittering Goldfinches surfing the treetops.

A Great Black-backed Gull gliding below my eye line

as I stand on a cliff over the sea, awed by its wingspan.

A pair of Ravens pulling worms in a field before flying

into the woods, gronking to each other as they go.

A Garden Warbler singing every day from a telephone line

stretching across a midsummer garden.

Curlews calling in the black and pink dusk at Topsham estuary.

A Kingfisher dancing above the Thames near Reading (my first ever!).

Swifts, Swifts, Swifts and more Swifts, swooping

through my garden and over the neighbours’ houses!

I know them so well yet can’t even imagine what they really are –

and always I  call out “Hello Swifts!” to them.

Naming in this way is not just a pleasure.

It is ecstatic!

Many who write about desire do so in terms of lack and longing.  I certainly can feel this lack and longing, as evidenced by this poem I wrote in 2012.  But is the desire only in the lack and longing – even here?

Morning Moment

It’s not quite 6:30 and I wake from a dream I can’t remember –                throw my legs out of bed and turn off the not-yet-ringing alarm clock.  It’s morning again.

I see a smudge of pink through the leaf patterns on the glass in the bathroom window.  Opening it a crack reveals to me broken grey clouds.  It’s a splash-the-face-only day.

Downstairs, dressed in a new blue top and with beads dripping from my earlobes, I know the birds are waiting for me in the garden.

Damp grass (rain last night) – apples and rose petals fallen on the ground.  There it is – that longing  – to enter together with another into the morning scents, the light – and delight – blurring into each other’s being within the living moment.  Morning moment.

There is no one there.

Longing is powerless – knowing

I will never have –

can’t have – shouldn’t have.

Longing is tinted with lack

and veined with loss.

Longing and fear of loss

imprison desire.

But I am getting old –

time thins before me.

A passionate woman is

feared by men –

distrusted by women.

Trust me or move aside

because I have a passion for life.

My love is not your longing.

My love is not what you long for.

I desire more than your love –

sweet as it is.

I want to touch and be touched

by everything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

During my research into working creatively with fear, I explored some sessions of EMRD (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing).  I used the sessions to look at my claustrophobia, which is marked, but not totally debilitating: anxiety in lifts, on the underground, in airplanes, going into caves or other enclosed places, putting on a balaclava, having my head under the bedclothes, etc.  Lots of people have these feelings.  I felt, for me, they might be connected to an experience of accidentally almost being smothered by my brother in the backseat of the car when I was 5 years old.  He had fallen asleep on top of a pillow that was on top of sleeping me!  I was impressed with how working on this memory through EMDR actually significantly reduced my claustrophobia (though not removing it entirely). So I asked the therapist if she felt EMDR could also be used to address my eating issues.  She said possibly, so we had a go.  What emerged was an image of a huge, hungry Bear who felt it could dominate me whenever it wanted to!  This certainly encapsulated the feeling of being taken over described in my previous posting.  That was as far as the EMDR process could take me.  When I explored it more with Sandra Reeve, the message arising from this was that I needed to “dance with the Bear.”  Hmmmm…….  Dance with a bear????

Reading Bromberg [1], who I mentioned in my first posting, offered me a way of viewing the Bear and its effect on me.  He asserts that, “most of the symptoms associated with eating disorders can best be understood as an outcome of dissociation.”  He describes “a never-ending war between parts of self, each denouncing the other around the issue of appetite and desire ”.  He locates “an affectively out-of-control infant within a dissociated self-state that takes on an imperious life of its own”.  This last sounded like it could be the Bear.  And a “war between parts of self” brought to mind another therapeutic method I had come across in my research into working with fear: Internal Family Systems Therapy[2] (IFS).  It focuses on communicating with parts of self.  I contacted an IFS therapist to see if he could help me with the Bear.

I had five sessions altogether and they proved to be both interesting and helpful.  The Bear quite quickly turned into a very large Baby that was cut off from me and all of my other “parts” (literally on the other side of a deep trench) – what is known as an “Exile” in IFS terminology.  With the therapist’s help, I dialogued with lots of other parts of myself that had a let’s-keep-the-Baby-out-of-the-picture attitude – ostensibly protecting me from this very Bad Baby.  These are divided into the “Managers” who organise and control things for me, and the “Firefighters” who react and create little (or big) distracting dramas.  They are aspects of myself I easily recognised.  I then remembered I had actually encountered the Baby many years ago.  It had arisen when I was having Gestalt therapy just before my 40^th birthday.  I even wrote a little song about it at the time:

BALLAD OF THE BAD BABY

I’ve been the good baby all of my life.

I’ve been the good girl.  I’ve been the good wife.

I’ve been the good mother.  I’ve been the good friend.

But now I’m afraid that this is gonna end.

 

Refrain:

For, the bad baby’s waking up.

The bad baby’s waking up.

She’s waking up today,

And there’ll be hell to pay.

Yes, the bad baby’s waking up.

 

The bad baby wants to fight.  The bad baby wants to cry.

The bad baby doesn’t love you, and she will tell you why.

The bad baby’s full of anger.  The bad baby’s full of pain.

She knew you wouldn’t love her, that’s why she never came.

 

But,….(Refrain)

 

I’ve tried to take good care of this bad baby inside me.

I’ve kept her in a glass box, but now I’ve set her free.

So if you think you see something strange behind my eyes,

You’ll know that it will be the bad baby on the rise.

 

Yes,…(Refrain)

 

This bad baby isn’t kind.  This bad baby isn’t fair.

This bad baby wants to make a mess of everywhere.

She hasn’t learned to love, and she hasn’t learned to care.

But I know that I can’t live as if she isn’t there.

 

For,…(Refrain)

 

I’m loud and unreasonable.  I want to be heard.

I’m not being fair.  I’m being absurd.

I know that you are angry, and I know you have a right.

But I no longer can keep this bad baby out of sight.

 

Cause…(Refrain)

 

If you think that you know me, if you think that I’m your friend,

I hope that you can see this change through to the end.

She’s very unattractive, but I think that you can see,

This terrible bad baby is the other half of me.

 

Help this bad baby to wake up…(Refrain)  (written 12.11.1989)

My first marriage did not long survive this awakening – too much of a challenge!  But the other dramas of that difficult time pushed my awareness of the Baby back into the unconscious again.  I was not as fully aware as perhaps I might have been that her “awakening” actually signaled a slow but steady rise in compulsive desire around food.  I was still trying to manage her rather than communicate with her. The IFS process helped me to move the controlling parts of myself, the Managers and Firefighters, back just enough for me to reach out and connect with the Baby.  She did not initially want to communicate with me – why should she?  Eventually, I was able to cross over the barrier and we seemed to agree to listen to each other more.  So now I consciously give her ice cream or chocolate cake at times and I cuddle her (myself) more these days.  This feels like some sort of success to me, but still I feel there is more to do in this area of distorted desire.  The IFS therapist observed that my use of an intermittent “fasting” routine, which I have done for almost 4 years since I heard Dr Michael Mosley talk about it on TV, might be my way of reproducing the circumstances of my early weeks of life.  I think he has a point, but it seems to be the least punishing way I have ever found of controlling my weight – and it has other positive health benefits.

Desire confusion around food is on-going.  What I am more able to do now is feel where the desire is coming from.  Quite often, my body is saying, “I don’t want” while the Baby is saying, “I want.”  And my body is getting a bigger voice in my life than it used to.  That voice is slowing strengthening, but I need to remember that the Baby can easily dominate things from behind a screen.

 

[1] Bromberg, Philip M (2011) Awakening the Dreamer, Clinical Journeys; Hove, East Sussex, New York; Routledge.

[2] Schwartz, Richard C (1995) Internal Family Systems Therapy; New York, London: The Guildford Press.

I have been reading Epictetus.  Along with Marcus Aurelius, he keeps popping up in my general reading around philosophy and desire.  They were both Romans (MA was Emperor between 161 and 180 AD).  The classical Greco-Roman perspective was patriarchal with big dollops of misogyny.  So – I’ve said it – that’s the way it was then – but we can still think about their philosophy even so.  They were both adherents of the Stoic school of philosophy.  Epictetus was earlier (c.AD 55-135), and he influenced MA.  Epictetus was born a slave, which is interesting in itself, as he talked a lot about freedom and slavery in relation to desire in his Discourses.  His master had access to the Imperial household, recognised and supported Epictetus’ abilities, and eventually freed him.  For his own safety (philosophers in Rome were out of favour with the Emperor Domitian), Epictetus moved across the Adriatic and founded a school of philosophy at Nicopolis on the west coast of Greece.

Epictetus’ general advice was to focus both your desire and your aversion only on whatever is within your control.  Only then can you be considered free.    He asks, “Can you be forced by anyone to desire something against your will?”¹  This gives his student (and us) pause for thought.  He talks a lot about will – of course – and the exercise of restraint.  Anyone who has tried to deal with eating issues knows that will power has its limits – or can work so well that it kills you.

But let’s persevere with Epictetus.  I am going to quote here the entire Chapter 2 from his Enchiridion²:

[1] The faculty of desire purports to aim at securing what you want, while aversion purports to shield you from what you don’t.  If you fail in your desire, you are unfortunate, if you experience what you would rather avoid you are unhappy.  So direct aversion only towards things that are under your control and alien to your nature, and you will not fall victim to any of the things that you dislike.  But if your resentment is directed at illness, death or poverty, you are headed for disappointment.

[2] Remove it from anything not in our power to control, and direct it instead toward things contrary to our nature that we do control.  As for desire, suspend it completely for now.  Because if you desire something outside your control, you are bound to be disappointed; and even things we do control, which under other circumstances would be deserving of our desire, are not yet within our power to attain.  Restrict yourself to choice and refusal; and exercise them carefully, with discipline and detachment.

Epictetus maintains that if you can do this, it will lead to a state of tranquillity.  In many ways this sounds like the state of equanimity so valued in the practice of Buddhism, where one is no longer gripped by the craving of attachment and aversion.  And, as in Buddhism, it cannot actually be reached by a simple act of will – but requires deep awareness and examination of attachment (desire) and aversion.  Epictetus is not entirely anti-desire – nor were any of the Stoics as far as I know.  The Stoic approach is more what you might call common sense and sticking with the achievable that is moderate and honourable.  He makes it sound simpler than I think he knows it is.  He shows how there has to be a weighing up of what you desire more/most.  If you feel you deeply value freedom and honour (as the Stoics tend to), the choices of turning from desires that are outside your control and engaging in “discipline and detachment” become more obvious.  So – you have to go down deep to feel what it is that you really want.  These deep desires need to be achievable and (as described in the 20/10/2018 post) “hedonic” to be effective at helping to moderate all the other competing desires that can arise.

Amy brought up the Rebel in her comments on 01/11/2018.  I think the roots of this might be in the desires for freedom and for having one’s autonomy respected, deep desires coloured by both cultural and personal differences in their meaning.  You can see these desires arise in infant development, rise again in adolescence – but then often getting lost in the competing desires/demands of adulthood, sometimes leaving people with a sense of not having really lived their own life.  Epictetus must have been able to live with not being free in the ordinary sense (he had no choice while he was a slave), but he obviously deeply valued inner freedom.

Do I want to be “tranquil” whatever that means?  Where was my “choice” in the episode of the Snickers bar (01/11/2018)? And, as I pointed out, there are cultural forces like shame that enter in.  Is this part of “discipline and detachment?  It doesn’t quite feel like that.  But Epictitus does make sense to me, too – especially in the idea of desire needing to be somehow “achievable”.  And inner freedom feels immensely desirable.  Do we all want to be free?  And what does that mean to each of us?  I was listening today to some songs of freedom from the South African freedom struggle – the desire was powerful there.

1. Discourses, Book IV:74
2. Discourses and Selected Writings; Penguin Classics

If I put “desire” into the alchemical vessel, will its golden essence be found?  That’s kind of what I’m hoping to do, but I’m thinking it’s very easy to end up with fool’s gold.

Initially there are drives/needs: for food, sex, safety, security, a sense of self-worth etc.  These are baselines for desire rather than desire itself, but the potential for confusion is present even at this level.  For instance, the overlap in desire imagery between food and sex has often been noted.  The connection between fear and desire can be seen in some of the possible “impurities” below.  When basic needs/drives are frustrated or damaged, they might lead to problematic desires connected with:

• Addictive behaviours & substance addiction
• Obsessions, including sexual obsessions
• A focus on worldly desires such as for wealth, power, conquest, fame, etc.
• Longing: It seems to me this is not as able to motivate action as desire is. It even can lead to chronic inaction. Pothos was one of the Erotes and symbolised longing or yearning.  It’s interesting that his flower was one that was used at funerals!  Are we in the realm of Freud’s Thanatos?
• A focus on physical pleasure/hedonism: Might this be a distraction or escape from facing inevitable mortality?

 

Before going deeply into desire, the surface area needs to be examined – then, ideally, to go down layer by layer.  I seriously doubt I will be that systematic but, as archaeologists know, what is discovered on the surface can give important information about what might be below.  I wrote an essay in high school on “Why I want to be an archaeologist.”  Was this the beginning of my desire to dig down deeply?  Instead I became a therapist, and it’s my daughter who now has a PhD in archaeology.  I’m not sure I have an archaeologist’s patience.  There will be a few spontaneous plunges and resulting re-surfacing that might happen in this enquiry.

On the surface of my life is a certain desire to eat in a unregulated manner that seems to take possession of me and does not really relate to any current actual need for food (although it probably relates to my very early actual needs for food/comfort etc.).  There is a difference, according to much on-line advice, between hunger (naturally arising from natural need) and appetite (the desire for food), which in either extreme (excessive or repressed) falls within the impurity of addiction in the above list.

I have always had difficulties with impulsive/emotional eating, often when I am tired, or when I am living in my head or when I am unhappy, frustrated, anxious or angry.  I am one of millions who suffer from this.  There are so many of us you might as well call it normal.  But it is very humiliating be thrown out of control so frequently around food, and this is made worse by the pressures and shame our culture projects onto women’s bodies and appetite.  Ever since knowing the circumstances of my birth, I have felt my eating issues were rooted in my birth experience and then compounded by my relationship with my not-quite-available mother as I grew up.  I have written about my birth and my mother elsewhere in Nothing Special, Experiencing Fear and Vulnerability in Daily Life (2015, Triarchy Press), but, in a nut-shell, I was separated from her at my hospital birth and brought to her every four hours for “ten minutes a side” –  then firmly taken from her again.  My father was away and the hospital wouldn’t let my mother go home until he returned two weeks later.  My mother said by then I was “a very good baby”, meaning I didn’t make much of a fuss.  In my childhood, while she was providing my food (and she was very good at this), I remained unaware of any impulsive eating.  But I did suck my thumb (a lot) until I was 11/12 years old when shame of the behaviour finally out-weighed the desire.  I also went through a period in late childhood of stealing – mostly little things from five & dime stores that I didn’t even want.  The shame I felt every time was excruciating.  This came to an end when I stole $5 from my mother’s purse.  She asked me about it and I denied knowing anything, but the unbearable shame about lying to my beloved (if unobtainable) mother brought an end to my stealing.  I am noticing the connection between desire and shame arising here.

It was when I left home and started feeding myself that the sense of a lack of control around eating began to be felt.  I have found various ways of managing my weight through my adult life – but not a way of managing the feelings of shame and being out of control around certain foods (usually fatty, sweet things).  I was breastfed, and honour my mother in her insistence on this against the prevailing culture of the time.  Having breastfed my own children, I now know how sweet breast milk tastes.  Sweet is a very primal taste and is associated with feeling nourished, relaxed and held.  Only, indulging in sweet foods doesn’t really provide that, does it?  At least not for long.  It’s been like this: I’m driving home from a long day and know I will be passing a shop.  The desire-thought for a Snickers bar arises in my mind (a neat package of sweet, fat & protein – like breast milk).  I recognise it and think I’ve got a handle on it. I try to let what arises in my mind just flow through me: “You deserve it after such a hard day!” – the taste memory arises – “You’re too weak to stop yourself, aren’t you!” – I smell the Snickers bar.  But I then remind myself about how bad I will feel afterwards, both physically and emotionally, and tell myself that what I really need is a couple of crackers and a cup of tea, followed by a 15 minute lie-down.  Yes – I am almost home and relax a bit.  Suddenly someone else takes control of the car and of me, and I am turning into the local shop, getting out, buying a Snickers bar and eating it immediately in the car.  I drive home feeling defeated and humiliated – but also sort of satisfied.  I have been struggling with various versions of this scenario throughout my adult life and still can’t seem to get out of being taken for a ride by this kind of desire now and again.  I know there are many others who can immediately relate to this.  What to do?

My first response to this question was to consider the primary experience of “wanting” – where “wanting” might first be felt – from the perspective of becoming newly born:

The Birthing of Desire

 

I want to move!

I want more room – more space!

I want this squeezing to stop!

I want the hurting to stop!

 

I want the warmth I have lost!

I want the holding I have lost!

I want the sounds I have lost!

I want the soft light, soft dark I have lost!

I want the place of just being I have lost!

 

Is anyone there?

I want you.

 

Now…is “wanting” the same as desiring?  My daughter-in-law pointed out that the way we regard the word “want” has changed from the original sense of lacking something required or essential¹ to a more selfish “having a desire to possess” (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/want).   This possibly reflects the increased value we give to being an individual that has arisen over historical time.

William Irvine² looks at the connection between desire and motivation, seeing that some types of desires are far more motivating than others.  His conclusion is that hedonic desire (clearly emotional) is far more motivating than non-hedonic desire (seemingly intellectual).  The intellect tends to form “instrumental desires” that lead towards something more rooted in emotion.  There are “chains of desire” in which it can be hard to determine the origin.  But if there is motivation then there is emotion.  He points out that “emotion” and “motivate” come from the same root: “movere,” the Latin for “to move”.  What he calls the “wellsprings” of desire lie in the classic approach/avoidance response – our wanting to feel good and avoid feeling bad.  This response can be seen in just about any life form that can move at all – and it is about surviving and thriving.  From the Buddhist perspective, this leads to attachment and aversion, both forms of what is called “craving.”  I intend to explore the Buddhist view of desire at a later point, but, as my above poem indicates, it may be necessary and natural to be pushed beyond avoiding feeling bad – and feeling bad may be necessary in order to connect with feeling good.  How good it can feel when a pain disappears!

Looking for origins is a never-ending backward glancing.  Behind the infant is the desire of the two people who came together, with varying desires, to create the embryo.  When looking at creation mythology I found a number of myths about “original parents” – and their desires.

Prapto³, a Javanese movement teacher who inspires and informs me, likes to tell one of these stories.  Here is my recalling of it as he told it in June 2015:

Shiva wants to be married – to have sons, make his own community.  He falls in love with a beautiful woman, like fire.  They go on honeymoon, riding the buffalo through the cosmos – Uma is in front, Shiva behind – over the south ocean of Java.  There is a beautiful sunset.  They see the stars coming – the shining of the sky – colours changing – at the same time, the moon is coming.  Uma is so beautiful in stillness, like a flower opening.  Shiva’s desire awakes.  Shiva is lost in desire.  She is flower fire in the cosmos shining!  Shiva wants intercourse.  Uma says, “Please, don’t or the cosmos will see us!”  Uma wants to go home and prepare.  Shiva says, “No! Now! Really, I need it!”  But she didn’t want to.  Uma refuses.  Shiva is angry.  Both become demonic.  Uma goes down and becomes Queen of Demons.  Shiva’s ejaculated sperm drops to the ocean and lots of demons are born – grow big – eat!  The God of Oceans says, “You cannot eat others.  Go ask your father for food.”  Up to Shiva all the demons go.  Shiva breaks his fangs.  He makes them into the God of Time, Kala.  He sends the God of Time down to Uma.

After the story, Prapto said, “The man cannot understand the meditation of the woman.  Always wants penetration of Emptiness.”

I realise I have wandered all over here.  But “wanting” is a thread through it all.  What else is emerging?

 

 

1. Little W, Fowler, H W & Coulson J (revised & edited by C T Onions) (1964 edition) The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, Vol II (p2383); Oxford; Clarendon Press.
2. Irvine, W B (2006) On Desire, Why We Want What We Want; Oxford, New York; Oxford University Press.
3. If you want to have a look at Prapto (Suprapto Suryodarmo) moving, try http://www.darc.media/suprapto-suryodarmo-stone-is-not-just-stone/ Filmed at Avebury the same month he told the above story, I am moved by the stillness of the stone, the inner stillness in his movement and the restless traffic beyond.

 

I think I am a life-long enquirer, although I have usually seen this as being a “seeker” or “traveller”.  Becoming a dramatherapist was part of the evolving journey, as was becoming a Buddhist.  Enquiry for me is about looking as deeply as I can, both within and without, waiting and wondering, digging around, opening doorways to see what will emerge or where I might step into – and finding ways to creatively express it all.  Always it is about questioning, questioning, questioning.  Enquiry is the thing, answers being not so important to me, feeling too close-ended, while resonances, patterns and connections are stimulating.

This blog arises out a previous self-generated enquiry that ran in various stages and formats between 2012 and 2017.  It started when Sandra Reeve invited me to take part in her first Project Group, a one year movement-based group where each participant would “bring into life a creative project” with her support and that of the other group members.  I still remember the rush of excitement when I received Sandra’s invitation and spontaneously knew I wanted to use the group to explore FEAR.  The project, which I named Working Creatively with Fear, took 5 years in all and found several expressions.  I created a performance of a series of my own poems based on the relationship some of the characters in Shakespeare’s The Tempest have with fear.  I ran a “therapeutic enquiry group” on the project’s theme with a group of therapists.  A book of my poetry and photos around the theme of vulnerability was published, and I wrote a chapter on my enquiry for the European Consortium of Arts Therapy Education.  Since the end of 2015, when the poetry book was published, I felt my desire to enquire was seeking out a new direction.

I like to write and am not so bad at it, poetry and essay being my favourite forms.  I am also now 68 years old and feel a bit behind those younger than me (and many older than me) in using the internet for creative purposes – so writing a blog seems like a good challenge.  This blog will not only contain my writing.  I am hoping there will be photography and video in it as well – and if I am feeling very brave, some visual artwork.  I will have to learn as I go.  I am not trying to promote anything, rather the aim is to share my enquiry.  I am curious about how others will respond to it – and what directions this might take me in.  But what am I enquiring into now?  Where do I want to start?  What do I want to explore?  What do I really want?  What is my desire?  Where will it take me?

The idea that came up, seemingly naturally, from my enquiries into fear and vulnerability was to enquire into DESIRE itself.  Why?  It first arose clearly when reading a book called Awakening the Dreamer, Clinical Journeys by Philip Bromberg towards the end of my research into trauma as part of my fear project.  Referring to H R Boris who wrote in the 1980s about working with anorexia, he states that “eating disorders arise when the dysregulation of desire is linked in infancy with the dysregulation of appetite.”  He goes on to say “that the essence of the human condition is having to recognise one’s insufficiency, and that the degree to which one draws satisfaction from human relatedness will keep one from seeking nonhuman solutions (e.g. food) as a means of compensating for the experience of loss.”  Further on he says, for some of us “what in adulthood might have developed into appetite and healthy, regulatable desire, instead, because it is denied the relational context on which that transformation depends, freezes the experience of being an affectively out-of-control infant within a dissociated self-state that takes on an imperious life of its own.”¹  This immediately and strongly resonated with my own early history and still unresolved issues around eating.  Inability to regulate emotionally is connected with early trauma, which I had been investigating during my fear enquiry.  But desire feels so much more than purely physiological urges and appetite.  What about the desire to create, the desire to explore, the desire to connect, the desire to enter deeply into life, the mind, the heart?  I WANT my desire – but I think it needs to be freed from the limitations of early trauma.

[1] Bromberg, Philip M (2011, p.119) Awakening the Dreamer, Clinical Journeys; Hove, East Sussex, New York; Routledge.