From Longing to Willingness

In my deep desire to grow more reciprocal connection between us, in my last blog I invited you to name any aspects of the Triangle of Transformtion (Desire. Resist. Gaze. Repeat) that evoked a desire for further exploration. Thanks to each of you who responded. One reader posed the question below:

How does this longing translate into the motivation of will to invest one's gifts in the world for the world?

Thank you for this big, beautiful question!

The move from internal longing to outward generosity is one of Life’s great artistic achievements and is a significant fruit of Grace offered and then integrated.

It is my experience that when I allow my desires to be held in Compassionate Witness, I awaken to greater participaton in the Universe's Call and Response that began even prior to my embodiment. When I risk sharing my desire with another, myself, or the Divine, and when this sharing is met reverentially, I begin to discern the very song that I am, with all of Creation, in Love.

Think of it like this: Something in the universe cries out its longing for a particular need and Creation answers such desire by fashioning the art that is you or me or some new creature, or process.

I believe the Animate Everything forms and reforms us our whole lives long around a central desire, around a particular nugget of divine DNA. Such desire rests within us like a diamond. It is this diamond through which Love’s light is refracted out into the world. Our awareness and reverencing of this deep desire is a sort of polishing, that allows it to sparkle even more. It's glittering becomes our own North Star, and also becomes a light for others' navigations.

Don’t you see? This is the very process of Evolution, with Creation inventing what Creation most needs to continue to flourish amidst changing conditions. This Evolutionary Reality and Process is just another name for God. As a part of Creation you absolutely are not separate from this Love Process.

And sweetheart, can't you hear Evolution crying out for your continued becoming, especially right now?

To live life to the full is to come into alignment with this North Star desire. None of us discover this star without a lifelong odyssey of adventure, which includes much wandering about and getting lost and then finding our way back, or being found.

Central to discovering and rediscovering our North Star is the practice of becoming present to our deep desire.

This is a sticky wicket, to be sure. Desire is a messy business, and we’ve been taught, understandably, to regard our own and others’ desires with suspicion. Not all desires, after all, are deep and pure. Some desires are shallow. Others are massively impure and disordered. Unconsciously acting upon our shallow and disordered desires can bring about dreadful and far-reaching consequences. Consciously living from our deepest desires transforms our world into what Creation has in mind.

So, the invitation is to bring consciousness —gentle curiosity and compassion—to ALL our desires.

All our desires? Do I really mean that?

I do. And here’s why:

Every desire that surfaces in our consciousness began as a facet of our birthright diamond of desire. But along the way the clarity of that desire has been marred by our wounds, illusions, cultural lenses, and so much more. We bring our desire into Compassionate Light/Contemplative Presence to see it more clearly. As we gaze upon it, or allow a trusted other to, something new  begins to happen. See the image of the Triangle of Transformation below.

Our will becomes free, or "motivated," in this process, initiating new ways of being and doing, which will result in something brand new, actions and resulting fruits the likes of which we could have never predicted.

C.S. Lewis once wrote that, "Surprise is the signature of grace." If the result is what you expected, you probably didn't encounter grace. The Animate Everything is more creative and resourceful than you can imagine; Life does new things. This is Evolution. It is God's way.

Sacred motivation is not, as we so often think, something we must muster, or build. True freedom, which is just another name for Love, is the natural impulse that rises of its own accord when we remove or surrender (and this does take some intention and effort, supported by grace) unwillingness, or willfulness.

So let's talk about those two obstacles (resistance) to motivation. Unwillingness and willfulness are two sides of the same coin of our enslavement. In unwillingness we are pre-occupied by fear, or resentment, or despair. We are caught in the illusions of needing to know (an illusion of the mind), being isolated (an illusion of the heart), or having no agency (illusion of the will). In willfulness we get hung up on the other sides of those hooks: believing we know best/fully, an overcompensation of feeling unloved by considering ourselves superior/indispensable, and a belief that we must and can be in control.

Not feeling motivated? Can you hold yourself firmly and kindly, for Love's sake, with your desire and resistance, in that long, loving, gently curious gaze of the Beloved?

Can you practice offering that gaze to yourself? You can. I offer guidance here.

Jesuit priest and luminary in the ways of Love, Anthony deMello writes, "...to understand what you are requires complete freedom from all desire to change what you are into something else." (The Way to Love, page 83)

This is a gaze of radical acceptance and deeply rooted compassion.

But consider its promise. DeMello continues:

"...you will notice a marvelous thing happening within you: You will be flooded with the light of awareness, you will become transparent and transformed.

Will change occur then? Oh, yes. In you and in your surroundings. But it will not be brought about by your cunning, restless ego that is forever competing, comparing, coercing, sermonizing, manipulating in its intolerance and its ambitions, thereby creating tensions and conflict and resistance between you and Nature—an exhausting, self-defeating process like driving with your breaks on."

Reader, you are correct. This is indeed an "investment," as your question implied. When we invest in Love, who can say what return we shall see? In our lifetime we may not see any. And yet, the Christian scriptures insist, "Love never fails."

In my own committed but young journey into Love sometimes I am blown away by fruits beyond my imagining. Sometimes those fruits are juicy surprises within my own soul; other times they abound through another. Sometimes the fruit is the sweet-wrenching longing for what I cannot yet discern, and grief.

My experience of Presence and Absence are the two sides of the coin of Love's reward.

May the desire that blooms in you become pure, in Love's light, so that you may become the taste of God's sweetness in our world.