Down Bad for Reality

Hello newsletter friends! The past few weeks have been quiet because I’ve been getting a real education in what it means to be devoted to desire, and I’m happy to be back and sharing some field notes.

I have a new podcast episode out— the second in this desire series. In the start of the series, we talked a lot about working with desire internally: how to talk with it, listen to it, see it as alive. This week, we’re zooming out a bit to talk about being taken on a crazy-ass backwards journey by desire.

For me, the big mystery of desire is the relationship between desire and the rest of the world. You start to work with a desire, and you end up asking questions about where it came from, how it relates to you, how it relates to the rest of the world. If we have a desire, does that mean we’re “supposed” to get the thing we want? Do desires come from “inside us” or from somewhere (or something) else? I’ve started seeing desire as a way to understand what reality is and how it works— desire as a path of coming to trust reality.

I’ve broken this path down into three stages of belief about what desire is and how it’s connected to the world.

Stage 1: My desires are bad and will fuck up my life. Most of us start here, believing that we can’t trust our desires, and that they will destroy the stable life we’ve worked hard to build. So we end up suppressing them and fearing them. In this first stage, we’re just starting to become willing to believe that maybe our desires won’t ruin everything. Internal desire work helps with this because we learn that our desires have good intentions and information for us. At the end of this stage, we start to trust our desires.

Stage 2: My desires are good and I must protect them from a cold, uncaring world. I trust my desires, but I don’t trust the rest of the world. Myself and my desires are the only things I can trust to want good things for me, and it’s my responsibility to fight and work to make my desires happen. If they don’t happen, I’ll experience grief, disappointment, and suffering. In this stage, we’re looking at the relationship between self and reality, and between desire and reality. The work here is on trusting that your desire is not disconnected from the rest of the world. You get there by experiencing all the ups and downs on the journey of desire as good and valuable, because they’re connected to desire.

Stage 3: My desires are not separate from the movement of reality, and neither am I. I can experience connection with reality through my desires. 

In this stage, we learn to move our relationship from the object of desire, to desire itself as life force, to all of reality as life force. Desire becomes the way that we engage with and connect to life force.

To put it slightly differently: When we work with desire internally, we learn that it’s life force. We say yes to a relationship with desire and we let the life force take us on a journey. In my experience, it’s hard not to fall in love with this force, to get fascinated with it, to want to be in connection with it. All of a sudden, our relationship to desire itself starts to be more important than the object of desire.

And if desire is a force, that moves and isn’t static, we realize that desire can never really be about a static object. We start to notice desire as being about an experience and a journey, and the thing you desire is just a convenient vehicle for the experience.

When we start to fall in love with the desire/sensation/experience, we discover that relating to desire means being on board for every part of the roller coaster. We start to see the ups and downs and disappointments and longings as part of a great love story with reality. And we see the parts of reality that are providing the disappointment, grief, ups, downs as connected to the life force of desire— they’re keeping the journey going.

And we end up down bad for reality. Down bad for reality is about being so in love with reality and the movement of the universe that you’re willing to fully experience all of it and where it takes you. You stop caring about whether you “get” the thing you desire, because your point of relation has shifted; now you just care about being in relationship to the movement of reality.

You start out wanting one specific thing, and you end up in love with the whole world.

Literally what could be more fun than that?

I go into way more detail about this in the podcast episode, and also dive into a lot of the emotions and fears that can come up around externalizing desire.

On Patreon, I have an episode up that talks a little more openly and vulnerably about my personal journey with desire over the past few months. It’s $5 a month to get access to that, and to my Close Friends on Instagram, where you’ll find looser, sillier, and more regular musings.

And if you want to work more closely with me on desire, I’m offering one on one sessions.

I’m thrilled to be on this journey; thanks for being here!