“I am at war with my desire; I keep trying to be free of it … but I’m tortured instead,” I said to him, this man I regard so highly. 

He said, after an extremely Buddhist pause, “the teaching is not to be rid of desire. Lean into desire. Lean into desire and take inspired action toward your desires — but know that the fruits, whether the fruits come and when, this is a result of the Brahman. We cannot control the fruits … but lean in. Lean into your desire.” 

The Brahman is the summation of all that is: all energy, deity, decisions and thoughts, all of creation. The Brahman brings the fruit; the human desires. 

So, desire. Desire and surrender to the Brahman … or, like Ram Dass said, “you cannot rip the skin off of the snake.”

To be free of desire . . . this is my recurring theme, lately. As a yogi and mystic, I’ve obviously dabbled in this concept – more than dabbled, though, haven’t I? Years of celibacy, living alcohol-free, a life lived largely in voluntary solitude . . . I read the old texts, I know the old stories, I tell them, too. The Prophet, the Four Agreements, the Yamas and NiYamas, the practice of non-attached manifestation and all the ways I love mySELF; blah fuckity blah. We get it. Free your mind, free your life.

But why doesn’t it feel free, then? I mean – okay, I am freer than most. But why have I not arrived at the blissful atma sort of broken out of the system la la land walking on air joy one would expect to accompany said freedom?

I just attended my first Porcfest, which, to many, will be a dirty word. I describe it as a freedom festival because frankly that’s what it is. And, as I also just finished reading the Tao de Ching in its entirety for the first time, it occurred to me how very Daoist the Libertarian movement is. Don’t hurt us. Don’t touch our stuff. To poorly summarize the Tao itself, “a government that meddles with its people will have a rebellious people; a government that limits its interference will enjoy a peaceful population.”

At the festival, a recently-freed, formerly wrongly imprisoned man addressed the crowd of a thousand or more people. After eleven years as a political prisoner, I expected any number of things to come out of his mouth: vive la revolution, alternate currency, political grandstanding – what would it be?

He spoke of Presence. He told the story of sitting on a bench on a hundred-degree day in the prison yard in Tucson, Arizona and feeling at once entirely present and grateful . . . and free. Free of desire. Even the desire to be free.

His words did not just move me, they jolted me back to a state of profound presence, standing there under the New Hampshire sun on asphalt in my little dress, suddenly feeling the convergence of every enlightened person who had ever found freedom – not externally, but within their own mind, first. In that moment, I, too, was free of desire.

This concept has haunted me since, though. I find myself irritably at war within my mind, with only brief moments of divine presence/freedom from my inner battle. One such moment of freedom was last week at ecstatic dance, when ironically, I was both free of desire and desirous of being free of it.

The war goes something like this: “we want what we want because we are meant to have it; some people’s dreams are other people’s nightmares, so we may as well go for our own,” (that’s me, my quote)

versus

“remain non-attached to the outcome; live as though it already is,” (manifest-y jargon) versus Rumi “the breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you / do not go back to sleep / you must ask for what you really want . . .” versus everydamn thing I am reading right now from Autobiography of a Yogi to the actual Tao de Ching speaking endlessly about non-desire, non-action, peace in not-doing, not-wanting.

What is it that I really want? Is it that I have not asked for it clearly enough? Or is it that the fates themselves are at odds with my desires?

I know the answer to the first two. I want what I have always wanted: freedom and love. And for that to be shared, for me to feel present, in The Presence, and wrapped up and held in this reality by the presence of others. And – yes, I know that I am loved. I am blessed by community and friendships and most of all my beautiful (nearly 10 years old!) boy. All of these things, these connections, I have made, I have dug from the bones of the earth and nurtured with the water of my love and tears and have held onto through the many storms.

Can we not be free of desire by – and this might sound crazy – simply satisfying the desire?

Tonight, I read a passage of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire to my son in which the families of the kids were coming to support them. Harry, like me, has no such family. I relate to him now like I did when I was young because I know what it is to be the Only One Like Me, to be alone in the world and fighting against unfair odds and enemies, to become bigger and braver and stronger than the longing.

I want to be free of desire, but I am simply not. Perhaps desire is fuel for passion? Perhaps desire is the key to transformation? Maybe I am not meant to have what I want. It has been seven years since I left my marriage, seven years since I felt safe, secure, chosen, part of a family, at peace.

That kid Supertramp from that book all the men love – the one who burned all his money and went traipsing into the American wilderness in search of true freedom (Into the Wild, it’s called) – that kid died alone in a fuckin’ bus, man. And his last written words, his own epitaph, went:

“Happiness is only real when shared.”

Maybe the same could be said of freedom. Are we truly free if we are alone in it? Or should I just be grateful for the community I have, the friendships, the ability to speak and live and be in my freest truth? Freedom and love look a lot different here in “real life” than they do in my dreams . . . but I am grateful for the ability to dream, after all.

“Do not go back to sleep / People are moving back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch / The door is round and open / Do not go back to sleep.” – Rumi writes … but then, “You must ask for what you really want. Do not go back to sleep.”

** Writer’s note: this has been sitting in my “drafts” for months — it wasn’t until recently that an elder taught me about the fruits of desire, putting this “war with desire” to rest inside my soul. I’ll share what he taught me in my next post.