The key points in this "speaking":
Desire keeps us stretched into the future, looking for an otherwise or a not-yet. Because it feeds on the future, desire is inherently insatiable.
We are terrified of the present moment because to belong fully to the moment is to die.
Time as the living present vs. the abstracted, artificial timeline of our story-lives. We live in an abstracted temporality in order to flee from the fear and shame of simply being alive.
All desires are innocent. They are just feelings that refuse to be felt fully, so we externalize them outward.
While desire stretches the self perpetually into the future, "pleasure is the present, savored with the totality of the flesh."
Other Notes:
In this episode, I mentioned two other podcast episodes, The Miraculous is a Mode of Thought and Jesus, Santa Clause, and Religious Belief.
For more on the paradoxical relationship between time and selfhood, you might like this essay.
Practice:
Can you transform a desire into a pleasure?
Think of something you want deeply, desperately: it could be a material object, success, or just love or respect.
Give yourself five minutes with this feeling.
Surrender your body to the sensation. Where is the desire felt? Is there a movement associated with it, a color? You can say the desire aloud if helps you to focus on the sensation.
Soon, you will tell the desire gently: there is nowhere for you to go but here.
The sensations will likely change in each moment. Let them. Is the feeling drilling inward, expanding, or lifting? Settle into the contours of the shifting sensation. Relax fully. Soon, even the pain at the heart of lack becomes pleasure. Everything becomes pleasurable in time.
Listener Insights:
How do you distinguish pleasure from desire? Can you feel the difference in your experience, in your body?
If you want your insights to be shared (with your name or anonymously), comment on this blog post, email me, or answer the Spotify questions attached to the episode.