UNWRAP YOUR DESIRE

Desire is what we call it when we recognize the motion of life within us. Life is always moving to renew, sustain, and evolve itself. In its essence, every desire is in service of your health, creativity, and connection with others.

Meditation prepares the body and heart to fulfill desire. Any desire is a mini-movie about how life could be. For people who have active lives, it is essential to meditate with desires. Meditation is a kind of playtime or dreamtime to inhabit the world you crave, linking your inner world of longing with the outer world of action.

In this chapter, we show you how to take any desire, unwrap it like a present, and get to its essence. A desire for anything – money, sex, a vacation, a baby, a better job, friends, entertainment – is a package of excitement about life. Every desire has within it the seeds of renewal and intimacy.

The primary syzygy of desire is between attachment and detachment, desiring and letting go. Desires can seem to be in conflict, for example, for time alone and time with your loved ones. It takes a lot of work to make your desires serve in harmony.

Unlived desire is a great source of suffering in life and can break up a relationship. Only some of our desires can be lived out. Meditation provides a way to “live in” a desire that it is not practical or ethical to “live out.” This chapter shows how to enter the construction shed of desires, take apart the ones we cannot live, and recycle the energy into something constructive.

There is a syzygy between acting out and acting in. Even desires we cannot live outwardly can light up our inner world. Instead of taking the desire so literally, you breathe with the feeling tone or essence of it. In this way, even taboo desires can give us their gift. Instead of living them out, you live them in. Taboo desires are a great source of energy.

There is a Yoga of Desire. Breathe with the desire as an energy, study its elements, the way it plays with space, fire, air, earth, and water.Track each desire back into yourself, and know its components. Know its essence. Link together all elements of your being to accomplish your desire. Let it mobilize you, electrify you, galvanize you into action. Let the attraction grow between the desire and the fulfillment. Enjoy the way the desire is activating you, alerting your senses. Enjoy each breath along the way.

If a desire is inappropriate, then find some aspect of the desire you can meditate on. I love Ferraris, in another world I would like to have one. But where I live – Los Angeles – there is nowhere to drive one freely. So I enjoy the fact that they exist and rejoice whenever I see one.