I have asked a dear friend to share some of his writing here. I feel he is an excellent writer and touches upon the many experiences and feelings we all share in the world. Here is one of many writings by him.
There is true desire. Where what we want converges with what we need and what is truly ours, waiting to be claimed. Not for possession. For contribution. At this intersection of genuine desire and need, there is a contribution to the world we must make and those people we need in order to do that. This desire is true and deep. It is calm. It moves toward integration and clarity. The less healthy aspects of our personality can fight against it. Because it always represents a challenge. It always asks us to bring our greatest level of maturity to bear. And part of us does not want to grow up and leave the familiar comfort of what we have known.
This true desire lies waiting. Within us and simultaneously in the world. The “wanting” here is pure. And it can be felt when the inner attraction meets its target in the world. There can be profound recognition. No I do not mean “romance” or soulmate or what is the other one, twin-flames … no it is something else entirely. It is not about our personal fulfillment and gratification and complete satisfaction in a couple union with each other.
It is something far more impressive and exciting. It is a coming together of people for a greater, transcendent purpose. It could be a couple relationship. But it could take another form. Most of you know this. Perhaps you just have not been able to put it into words. Many of you have experienced this, as parents for example. In community involvement. But the depth and the degree to which it is experienced in any arena can vary greatly.
It can be a very rich and deep and sustaining experience … beyond any other blessing life can bestow. Or it can be experienced at a more modest level of intensity but still with outwardly emanating benefits, whose “good” can go on and on, rippling outward.
The experience of this true desire is not “like a hunger”. It does not feel appetitive in its nature though it may look like it is expressing itself that way sometimes. It is more like a mighty hand is carrying you ever so gently in a particular direction. Toward someone. Towards something. It is very powerful. It has frightened me on occasion. It is uniform. Freed of conflicts and ambivalence. Simple. Able to give without restraint. Able to restrain without effort. If we can join with it we can serve the greater plan that genuinely does exist beyond our comprehension. But I would never expect anyone to believe this. Unless you experience it across a significant time frame well it is easy and even natural to doubt it.
I can’t pretend that I even like all of this. Not wholeheartedly, without reservation all of the time. Yet I know these things to be true from my experience.
Then there is false desire. There is “wanting to want”. The concealment of our genuine needs. It is turbulent, exciting, dramatic to experience. It is seductive. Assertive. It has real power. Not the greatest power. But on the surface it makes the most noise and vies for the greatest attention. It whispers in our ears about attainments, accomplishments, ambitions … Up to a certain point in our development, wanting to want is the best we can do. And from the engagements it brings us into we can learn everything we need to learn to come to true desire. But this pathway necessarily entails pain. And loss. This is life.
If we can survive and learn and grieve our losses, avoiding repetitions of the same errors, it is possible to find a greater freedom.
Until we are able to simply want what is truly ours, our desires are a “wanting to want” what is not ours. A concealment of our true needs, those which carry us toward the possibility of fully flowering into the person we are ultimately meant to be. In this sense, destiny is a very real thing. But it is quite different to the many illusions we can mistakenly manufacture in its place.
To claim my true desire, to find my true need and have the opportunity to express my genuine contribution I have to accept my responsibility, not just for everything which is mine to be accountable for, but for a greater set of needs the world calls out to me to shoulder. Once I am able to. Once I have developed the capacity sufficiently and have honed the skills required enough. Once I have become “good enough” at being able to do this. Because I will not be alone in this. I will need others. Particular people. In particular contexts. Where we provide in particular ways, meeting particular needs. I find this very mysterious. But I also know it to be true.
I am able to encompass all of this in my understanding to some extent. But it remains to be seen whether I can continue to live it or not to any extent.
There is only one true path. It does not lie fixed and unchanging ahead of us. And even if it did we could never see it, in its fullness. But it moves, in any case with the emerging circumstances of the world. Every other possible path is an error. Billions of possible errors. One true path.
Finding your true path could only be described as a very significant development. How few really do so? Getting lost is not only easy and common, it is frequently so captivating we do not notice we are lost, until … Sometimes it can be too late. I have seen this in the lives of others. I have become aware a few times in my life I was skating very close to that abyss. That perception is a terrifying one. But it is even more unfortunate not to have it, or to be unable to face it.
When that occurs people plunge to their ruin, more or less swiftly as if hellbent on an inevitable process of destruction. Sometimes apparently powerless to pull themselves out of it. This is a terrible and irrevocable reality of life. And it can help me to take my life seriously. It is essential in order to avoid ruin.
But this path of ruin is not where any of us need to go. It is no longer where I need to go. But I have been this far before, 30 years ago and I did lose my way. Not completely. But 20 years later it had come very close to that.
53 years is a long time to spend living before you feel some small degree of confidence in saying these things about yourself and your life. And yet what it really means is that I am extremely fortunate. But it does not indicate any further meaning, positive or negative. For some can only come to this place much later in life. Some have their opportunity to do so, stripped from them by injustice, circumstances, oppression, a sudden and unforeseeable accident.
Therefore just to arrive really is an incredible event. Some good fortune is certainly involved. Following this path is the real substance of life. Can I do this? How far can I go? What is the next step? These are the questions I find absorbing me with greater and greater gravity. -JD-
Thank you JD/Burning Song for this deep writing! It has opened my eyes to many things to look at in my life and what I need to do in the now and into the future.
“There is only one true path. It does not lie fixed and unchanging ahead of us. And even if it did we could never see it, in its fullness. But it moves, in any case with the emerging circumstances of the world. Every other possible path is an error. Billions of possible errors. One true path.” Something for us all to ponder and be with.
