Curriculum of the Soul

Part 1

WHAT WE’RE GIVEN

FATE AND DESTINY

The Three Moirae, Flemish Tapestry, c. 1520

Both Worlds

The Greek myth of the Moirae tells the story of the three sisters of fate. These sisters are at work in their mythic world before our birth. The first sister, Clotho, spins the thread of life from her spindle. The second sister, Lachesis (the drawer of lots), measures out the amount of thread allotted to each person. As she measures, her rod points to a specific horoscope on the globe. And the third sister, Atropos, determines when and where Clotho’s thread will be cut, the time and place of our death. While the sisters are at work weaving our fate (from the Latin fatale, or death), our destiny is determined by our own actions through free will.

There is also a Jewish myth saying that God sends an angel to each womb to teach the unborn everything it will need to know, including the secrets of the soul. The indentation between a person’s upper lip and nose is called the philtrum, which is Greek for to love or to kiss—and it is said to be physical evidence of where Lailah, the Angel of Conception, placed its finger to make the new child temporarily forget the wisdom already imparted to it.

One of the purposes of each life is to uncover that forgotten part, our inherent wisdom found through our gifts, while simultaneously navigating the fate that the sisters have allotted us. Albert Einstein wrote: Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for insects as well as for the stars. Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance.

Discovering our fate can get tricky in a culture that loves to categorize. For instance, one is often considered a success as a result of the acquisition of awards, degrees, and promotions. Yet isn’t living a happy life in and of itself successful? What about being a great listener? Or someone who spreads calm simply by entering a room? These qualities are beyond category.

The soul cannot be classified with titles such as plumber, doctor, or mother. Instead, it reveals itself as someone who is good with his hands or someone who is compassionate or someone who is a caregiver. The person who is good with his hands could become anything from a mechanic to a musician to an energy healer. The thread is given, but how it is used depends upon a myriad of influences from family to environment to education. There are even those who have come from utterly dysfunctional families and difficult environments and have realized their calling because of these difficult circumstances.

The Soul’s Potential

Kabir, in his poem Student, Do the Simple Purification, said that everything the seed will become lies dormant in the seed from the beginning. A caterpillar, for instance, contains not only the DNA for the butterfly but also the compulsion to spin the cocoon that will catalyze its own transformation. This is the case with our souls as well. Each soul has a specific imprint—its own unique nature—as well as the possibilities available to it in this lifetime and the impulse to live them out.

How do we discover our destiny, or soul’s purpose?

And how do we stay on the path whilst the threads of fate pull us back and forth?

One answer is to feel your fate where there is no fear. Feeling your fate provides a more direct connection to your experience rather than trying to figure it out. Thinking on its own, with its beliefs and perceptions, immediately acts as a filter. Planning a career, for instance, might be fear based if the goal is security rather than sharing your gifts with the world.

Feeling into your fate usually takes time, patience, and some curiosity about the fabric of your own soul. Sometimes it is the path of least resistance when support is readily available. Other times it is a process of eliminating obstacles found through gender, family, and cultural expectations. With the path clear, you can go to where the heart is drawn toward. These are the places we cannot fear, which are the places that keep company with love. Just keep following love and your fate will be revealed.

What we love to do is both idiosyncratic and mysterious. Since this is such a part of our soul, we experience the mystery of life from the very beginning. This is an underlying theme of the curriculum: how to become comfortable with this mystery.

How comfortable can you be without having to think about it?

How do you feel your fate?

How much better is it to bear with patience whatever shall happen! said Horace (Ode 1.11, translated by C. Smart). This could be a quote from the Buddha. In other words, open up to life and greet whatever comes to you. Appreciate the moments you are given. With all of life’s distractions, how do you do that? By doing what you really love. What is it that you engage in where all sense of time is lost? It is exactly like a child rejoicing in the marvelous world of curiosity and imagination. This is one of their great gifts to us! Children remind us how to live in the present moment. As Rainer Maria Rilke put it, May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.

Choices

Feeling your fate where there is no fear reminds us that apart from our primal survival instinct, knowledge, and tools, there are choices to be made. As children, we learned (if unconsciously) subtle variations of fear as a result of absorbing others’ beliefs, judgments, and prejudices. The impact of these three things upon our lives has created the wounds that we need to address and heal so that we may meet, know, and make an ally of, in the deeper sense, our own fate. This is one path.

Another way is to look at being in the present moment when we are in touch with our passion. I’m not talking about passion in the sense of anger or lovemaking, but rather as the pursuit of an idea or the love of some activity that enhances your life. The central theme of the Argentinean film The Secret in Their Eyes explores this idea. After repeated failures in trying to track down a murder suspect, one of the investigators makes a breakthrough: A guy can change anything: his face, his home, his family, his girlfriend, his religion, his God. But there’s one thing he can’t change. He can’t change his passion. It turns out that the murder suspect’s passion, soccer, is what leads the police to a location where they make an arrest. This passion is the very texture and fabric of Clotho’s thread.

This is not to say that there aren’t inherent dangers in playing out your fate. However, the question is not about the risks, but rather about the joy and genuine presence that is inspired in the living out of your particular passion—in what you cannot fear. Consider this excerpt from Robert Grimes’s poem:

Fate and Destiny

Fate. Destiny.

When is the opportune moment?

At what point in our life will our Fate and Destiny be revealed?

Or will we realize what our Fate and Destiny are only when it is too late?

Or will we pass our Fate and Destiny without knowing it?

Fate. Destiny.

If someone tells us what our Fate and Destiny are, will we like what we hear?

Or will you strive against the path set before you?

—Robert Grimes

Considering the cultural imperatives and the expectations of our families, is it any wonder that a soul-centered life has become distant? This is where ego can play a vital role in shaping our destinies.

How do we become conscious enough to get in touch with our soul’s purpose?

From a soul’s perspective, more education doesn’t necessarily lead to a better life. Highly educated people often don’t often consider or even tolerate challenges to their particular training. Yet look at how alternative medicine has grown exponentially in response to the failures of traditional Western approaches. Knowledge is not the same as wisdom, which comes from the combination of experience and reflection. Faust made a pact with the Devil to give up his soul in exchange for knowledge and magical powers. The early versions of the story end with his going to hell. Is that a metaphor for a life without soul?

Joseph Campbell spoke about how tragically modern man has been climbing the ladder (of success) only to find that the ladder has been leaning against the wrong wall all along. In an interview, he had a very soulful response when asked if he had ever done anything just for money: Heavens, no. Making money without a connection to your gifts is one way of selling the soul. This happens when you prioritize survival (or greed) over all else. If making ends meet has been accomplished, the soul is far more attracted to abundance in whatever form it appears, be it good health, humor, connection, or being in Nature.

Which Path Will You Walk?

There is a story about two former students of Carl Jung. One had everything going for him: a new job, a new wife, a new home. When Dr. Jung learned of this, he just sighed. On the other hand, the second student had recently lost his job and his girlfriend and didn’t even have a place to live. Dr. Jung invited that student to come, sit down, have a glass of wine, and celebrate, saying, Now we can learn something.

The soul throws a party after each one of our losses. This is the birth of the blues. The soul likes things stripped down most of the time. When we are striving for success, approval, validation, recognition, praise, or fame, the soul takes refuge in our dreams (or nightmares) as we sleep. Yet when all pretense falls away, the soul may reemerge and find expression and a new perspective in the lessons learned from suffering. Instead of striving, there is humility. The soul always has a way of counterbalancing any inflation of the ego.

Thank You, My Fate

Great humility fills me,

great purity fills me,

I make love with my dear

as if I made love dying

as if I made love praying,

tears pour

over my arms and his arms.

I don’t know whether this is joy

or sadness, I don’t understand

what I feel, I’m crying,

I’m crying, it’s humility

as if I were dead,

gratitude, I thank you, my fate,

I’m unworthy, how beautiful

my life.

—Anna Swir (translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan)

Some of that humility may arise from an even broader view, as when the Buddha said, It is not easy to be reborn as a human being. It is rarer than for a one-eyed turtle, who rises to the surface once every hundred years, to push his neck through a wooden yoke with one hole that floats on the surface of the wide ocean.

As mentioned in the introduction, the soul is just happy to be here—or, as Rumi said, The soul is here for its own joy. Its joy is in the discovery of itself while meeting the challenges of fate playing out and ultimately fulfilling its destiny. Within the flow of life’s stream, synchronicity (moments of meaningful coincidence) and miracles become as ordinary as breathing. On a spiritual level, this joy and challenge represents not only our path to the divine but also the divine’s path to us. St. John of the Cross implied that any life that comes from the heart will be blessed by the divine.

Is That My Fate?

Do they prove anything to you, these tears?

All that I had I laid outside that door

where I was told you lived, and someone took those gifts,

was it you?

Were they that worthless that no thanks were given?

That must have been the case for I heard

not one word of gratitude.

Has it ever happened that a lover courting a lover

has not offered trinkets? Surely you did

not begrudge me for that.

In the world of amorous play amongst your forest creatures

I have tried to learn some secret about love

to bring you as near as they did; for I see how happy

you made them.

The flame called the moth but the glass pane was there.

How many have died not in the fire but in the cold,

crazed in longing?

Is the fate of any heart to not reach you?

No, no, that is not the fate of any soul.

—St. John of the Cross (translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

Open the Door

Even though our fates are with us from the beginning, that doesn’t guarantee the playing out of what we were given. Many people die young for whatever reason and may not even come close to realizing their soul’s purpose. Others may never feel or heed their calling. And some find it only later in life, like Grandma Moses, who didn’t begin her painting career until her 70s.

Our modern culture doesn’t seem too concerned with the soul life. In contrast, there is an aboriginal culture in Australia in which, after initiation, each person is called upon to rename themselves in line with their soul’s purpose.

So search deeply for Clotho’s thread. It has been there all along.

When was the last time you danced, sang, were enchanted by a story, or sat in silence? Or touched the Earth with your hands or feet? Or looked at the sunset as if it were your last day alive?

These are just some of the doors that can lead you back to the thread of your fate and destiny.

JOY

We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.

—The Buddha

The Freedom of Joy

Joy is an essential part of who we are. To quote Rumi again, The soul is here for its own joy. Nothing external is required—just being here is enough. Joy tends to define the high points in our lives because it is the antithesis of suffering. The pursuit of happiness is even listed as an unalienable right in the United States Declaration of Independence.

Yet there is also a shadow side to this open-ended and generous aspiration if the pursuit of joy allows us to rationalize any action for the sake of being happy. In the process, this may cause harm to oneself, others, or the planet. The pursuit of happiness creates a destination that appeals to our egos. On the other hand, the soul is satisfied with the joy of simply being. This simplicity without strings attached allows us to participate fully in the mystery of life. How many people do you know who embody joy? The author and therapist Catherine Fenwick wrote, Your body cannot heal without play. Your mind cannot heal without laughter. Your soul cannot heal without joy.

Several years ago, a friend almost died of a rare virus. Some time after that event, we were talking about current challenges in our lives when she said, I’m just happy to feel anything. That’s the soul talking. We can all get caught up in the veneer of reality, all those functional things that keep our lives in motion. But when we do, we lose the larger perspective: existence itself is a gift.

Often the way to joy is found through the practice of gratitude for this gift. But it is important to remember that wanting comes from the ego, whereas joy can appear without wanting anything at all.

This undiscerning joy simply spins in the next poem, which works its way through understanding and eventually back to joy.

Blur

Storms of perfume lift from honeysuckle,

lilac, clover—and drift across the threshold,

outside reclaiming inside as its home.

Warm days whirl in a bright unnumberable blur,

a cup—a grail brimmed with delirium

and humbling boredom both. I was a boy,

I thought I’d always be a boy, pell—mell,

mean, and gaily murderous one moment

as I decapitated daises with a stick,

then overcome with summer’s opium,

numb—slumberous. I thought I’d always be a boy,

each day its own millennium, each

one thousand years of daylight ending in

the night watch, summer’s pervigilium,

which I could never keep because by sunset

I was an old man. I was Methuselah,

the oldest man in the holy book. I drowsed.

I nodded, slept—and without my watching, the world,

whose permanence I doubted, returned again,

bluebell and blue jay, speedwell and cardinal

still there when the light swept back,

and so was I, which I had also doubted.

I understood with horror then with joy,

dubious and luminous joy: it simply spins.

It doesn’t need my feet to make it turn.

It doesn’t even need my eyes to watch it,

and I, though a latecomer to its surface, I’d

be leaving early. It was my duty to stay awake

and sing if I could keep my mind on singing,

not extinction, as blurred green summer, lifted

to its apex, succumbed to gravity and fell

to autumn, Ilium, and ashes. In joy

we are our own uncomprehending mourners,

and more than joy I longed for understanding

and more than understanding I longed for joy.

—Andrew Hudgins

In the latter part of the poem, the speaker realizes that the joy in the world, especially the natural world, happens with or without our participation. This thought is a shock to the ego, which believes its presence is what creates the world—that without me the world would not exist. It doesn’t need my feet to make it turn. / It doesn’t even need my eyes to watch it. A grieving can occur as we come to see that our presence is transient and even unnecessary: We are our own uncomprehending mourners.

How the ego wants to know why it’s not needed in relation to the luminosity of joy! Knowledge is secondary to the soul’s inherent relationship to and desire for delight: And more than understanding I longed for joy. Nurturing the soul is an option to the incessant pull of the ego. When the ego can step aside and recognize that joy simply spins all on its own, the soul becomes free to participate in that joy. Rumi wrote, When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy. The young boy in the poem makes the world simple again by letting the ego step aside, allowing for an immediate connection to Nature.

If we have a simple existence, we shall feel how happy and how fortunate we are. There are some people who are of the opinion that simplicity is almost tantamount to stupidity. But simplicity and stupidity are like the North Pole and the South Pole. One can be as simple as a child and, at the same time, one can have boundless knowledge, light and wisdom.

—Sri Chinmoy, The Wings of Joy: Finding Your Path to Inner Peace

Discovery

Welcome Morning

There is joy

in all:

in the hair I brush each morning,

in the Cannon towel, newly washed,

that I rub my body with each morning,

in the chapel of eggs I cook

each morning,

in the outcry from the kettle

that heats my coffee

each morning,

in the spoon and the chair

that cry hello there, Anne

each morning,

in the godhead of the table

that I set my silver, plate, cup upon

each morning.

All this is God,

right here in my pea-green house

each morning

and I mean,

though often forget,

to give thanks,

to faint down by the kitchen table

in a prayer of rejoicing

as the holy birds at the kitchen window

peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,

let me paint a thank-you on my palm

for this God, this laughter of the morning,

lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,

dies young.

—Anne Sexton

The everyday routine of waking up and preparing food is a perfect place to begin. Appreciation (of her hair, a towel, the eggs, even the boiling water) indicates a receptive heart. Joy and appreciation are very close friends. Those who make a habit of complaining, criticizing, and judging usually are not very happy. In a sense, this is similar to looking at a glass containing 50 percent water as either half full or half empty. And the poem adds a nice touch with its speaker’s conversation with inanimate objects: in the spoon and chair / that cry ‘hello there, Anne.’

Now everything is waking up through relationship. Here is where the secular is elevated to the sacred: All this is God. A shift takes place near the end of the poem, from joy and appreciation to open gratitude. Gratitude contributes to a lasting joy. This can’t be overstated. If there is a useful role for the ego, it is to extend the life of joy by giving thanks for its gifts. Here, the speaker fed herself breakfast, but she has also nourished her soul.

Joy is the soul’s natural response to the beauty of the world. There is nothing complicated about this relationship. This is why children are so quick to find it wherever they turn: the sun that shines, in playing with a ball, in lying back in the grass. Keeping things simple makes joy that much more accessible. Once simplicity is lost, joy is harder to recover, as is evident in all the means used to plan for joy, from parties and vacations to the use of drugs and alcohol. This puts a heavy reliance on the external. Under these circumstances, the ego gets hooked as the soul gets lost.

This often seems to follow as we get older. Adhering to the cultural paradigm and status quo is compelling. An alternative is the cultivation of appreciation and gratitude—a practice that keeps us in touch with delight.

The poet Stanley Kunitz wrote of being touched this way in the next poem.

The Round

Light splashed this morning

on the shell-pink anemones

swaying on their tall stems;

down blue-spiked veronica

light flowed in rivulets

over the humps of the honeybees;

this morning I saw light kiss

the silk of the roses

in their second flowering,

my late bloomers

flushed with their brandy.

A curious gladness shook me.

So I have shut the doors of my house,

so I have trudged downstairs to my cell,

so I am siting in semi-dark

hunched over my desk

with nothing for a view

to tempt me

but a bloated compost heap,

steamy old stinkpile,

under my window;

and I pick my notebook up

and I start to read aloud

the still-wet words I scribbled

on the blotted page:

Light splashed…

I can scarcely wait till tomorrow

when a new life begins for me,

as it does each day,

as it does each day.

—Stanley Kunitz

The poet begins with the simple act of looking at a garden with light providing a visual sensuousness to the first stanza: Light splashed, light flowed, and I saw light kiss. This is enhanced by the naming of specific colors: shell-pink, blue-spiked, and brandy. In the next stanza, the poet leaves the garden for his interior world of memory and reflection. A curious gladness shook me.

Interestingly, the speaker then sequesters himself in a most nonsensuous location: his basement cell in the semi-dark, hunched over with nothing for a view. That curious gladness turns out to be his practice and discipline for translating the world, or the garden in this case, into his own soul language—poetry. The richness of the garden then becomes the joy of his art. Because of the cycle of noticing and translation into art, the poem finishes with an innocent anticipation of a new life awaiting each new day.

Joy shows up in four ways here: in the noticing of beauty, in his reflection upon it, by its translation into art, and—as if that weren’t enough—in the anticipation of doing The Round all over again. As a philosophy of life, it’s quite beautiful. Each part is given equal importance. First, you have to be present enough to notice the infinite ways that the world is beautiful. Then there is the paradox of needing to withdraw from that beauty not only to appreciate it but also to let it shine through the lens of your soul. The soul loves contrasts. That new light is your art, however it may manifest.

A Caution

If your soul has been nourished in these ways, an anticipation is aroused to begin the whole process again. During this unfolding, there is always a hidden shadow. Surrounded by beauty all of the time, your senses may get dulled. The question becomes how to relate and respond to that beauty so the soul becomes enriched. Even beauty and art can turn into a routine unless the soul is touched. Without that connection, we’re just passing time—human doings rather than human beings.

Salt Heart

I was tired,

half sleeping in the sun.

A single bee

delved the lavender nearby,

and beyond the fence,

a trowel’s shoulder knocked a white stone.

Soon, the ringing stopped.

And from somewhere,

a quiet voice said the one word.

Surely a command,

though it seemed more a question,

a wondering perhaps—What about joy?

So long had it been forgotten,

even the thought raised surprise.

But however briefly, there,

in the untuned devotions of bee

and the lavender fragrance,

the murmur of better and worse was unimportant.

From next door, the sound of raking,

and neither courage nor cowardice mattered.

Failure—uncountable failure—did not matter.

Soon enough that gate swung closed,

the world turned back to salt heart

of wanting, heart-salts of will and grief.

My friend would continue dying, at last

only exhausted, even his wrists thinned with pain.

The river Suffering would take what it

wished of him, then go. And I would stay

and drink on, as the living do, until the rest

would enter into that water—the lavender swept in,

the bee, the swallowed labors of my neighbor.

The ordinary movement swept in, whatever it drowsily holds.

I begin to believe the only sin is distance, refusal.

All others stemming from this. Then come,

Rivers, come. Irrevocable futures, come. Come even joy.

Even now, even here, and though it vanish like him.

—Jane Hirshfield

The poet’s Zen Buddhist leanings serve as a subtle filter for her to observe the external world followed by the internal question, What about joy? That observation has a neutrality about it that can be almost disconcerting. But then there is a change in perspective about what no longer matters in the presence of joy: better and worse, courage and cowardice, even uncountable failure. Before long, the seasoned heart—bruised, broken, experienced—turned back to salt heart / of wanting, heart-salts of will and grief.

It’s quite natural for all of us to return to our old habits unconsciously. Still, the world, with or without joy, continues on in its own cycle of life, suffering, and death. Twice the poem refers to a diminished state of awareness: I was tired and the drowsy quality of ordinary movement. There is a general lack of joy in this state, along with the consciousness around the river Suffering.

Here, the sin of distance and refusal becomes apparent. This is a form of denial that can allow us to stay in a default, unconscious mode. The Jungian analyst Marion Woodman wrote, Until we can recognize the power of the unconscious to sabotage our conscious endeavors, we can change nothing. There is an openness at the end of the poem that presents joy as a possible antidote to suffering, leading back into consciousness even if it is fleeting like everything else.

Practice

Sometimes joy needs practice for it to be rediscovered. The previous poem is an older person’s perspective gained from being in the world, and perhaps even weary of it. What will it take for the adult to get back to the simple joy of being alive? Often it’s after the work and vigilance of discipline that we are able to absorb and grow from the pain that opens the heart once again in order to make the necessary return to simplicity.

Poem Without A Category

Trailing my stick I go down to the garden edge,

call to a monk to go out the pine gate.

A cup of tea with my mother,

looking at each other, enjoying our tea together.

In the deep lanes, few people in sight;

the dog barks when anyone comes or goes.

Fall floods have washed away the planks of the bridge;

shouldering our sandals, we wade the narrow stream.

By the roadside, a small pavilion

where there used to be a little hill:

it helps out our hermit mood;

country poems pile one sheet on another.

I dabble in the flow, delighted by the shallowness of the stream,

gaze at the flagging, admiring how firm the stones are.

The point in life is to know what’s enough—

why envy those otherworld immortals?

With the happiness held in one inch-square heart

you can fill the whole space between heaven and earth.

—Gensei (translated by Burton Watson)

There is a lovely soul and implied spiritual perspective here—noticing, once again, rather than judging. No distinction is made between the good, the bad, and the ugly (Waterman). The ego is put into check by knowing what’s enough with that way of seeing.

Now we have several pieces: simplicity, gratitude, and noticing all put into practice, giving the ego a healthy and transparent container to work from. Put these together and you approach pure mind. New research suggests that the heart controls the brain rather than the other way around. Pure mind coming from a pure heart brings joy that can fill the whole space between heaven and earth. That’s the soul in full blossom.

DESIRE / PASSION

"Baile Andaluz," José Villegas Cordero, 1893

There is no passion to be found playing small—in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.

—Nelson Mandela

Beyond Survival

Now we come to yet another crossroads for the soul. On the one hand, there’s our fate and the passion connected to the gifts of that fate. Then there’s the body with its instinctive need for survival, safety, and security. It is a struggle without food and shelter. The desire to bring children into the world is not possible without these. Yet, beyond survival, desire is a powerful motivator. What do we do with that desire? Its energy can be boundless. Just refer to the Guinness Book of World Records and consider the desire required to create a new standard in whatever field.

As the impulse behind creativity, desire is essential. Duke Ellington wrote more than 9,000 songs. But there is a shadow side when it becomes the fuel for those emotions that arise from fear and may become aggressive. This is where the ego can find itself in trouble. When one set of desires confronts another, conflict usually arises. This is the way of the ego-centered world.

Until we understand the complex nature of desire, human behavior will stay with what is familiar and be reluctant to change. Meanwhile, the soul waits patiently on the sidelines for love to reappear.

In the following poem, Tony Hoagland uses springtime as a metaphor for some of our primal urges and the unconscious.

Just Spring

The teenage boys who broke into

Our Lady of the Sacred Heart

to graffiti their new vocabulary

of swear words on the white white walls

were attracted enough by the church, at least,

to vandalize it.

They broke the virgin’s plaster nose

with baseball bats

and marked her private parts with orange spray paint

because they loved their mothers so much

it was killing them,

but they left the gaunt, adolescent torso of Jesus

hanging on the wall, untouched,

because they didn’t recognize themselves.

Or maybe it’s just Spring

which drives more birds and flowers crazy.

Desire, someone says,

polishing his turbo-charged Camaro in the drive,

running his hand over its curves,

it’s a bitch.

The blurred blue letters of the name Dianne

scorched into his forearm

record a season in his life

he probably regrets,

but desire, if you don’t let it out, everybody knows

backs up and poisons you inside

like old sap clogged inside a tree

or like the hard line of JoAnn’s mouth

when she said,

speaking of her first and recently demolished marriage,

Never Again,

gripping the steering wheel with both hands

and jamming the gas pedal

straight down into the floor,

though she probably still wants to be followed, pulled over,

taken from her car and carried off into the heavenly tall grass

of heterosexual imagination,

then kissed all over her thirty-nine-year old body

until, like Spring,

she comes and comes and comes.

Suffering Mother of God. Sweet Jesus.

—Tony Hoagland

Desire is as natural as breathing. But if desire comes from the wrong place, there’s the possibility of trouble. Mother Teresa said, It is only by frequent deaths of ourselves and our self-centered desires that we can come to live more fully. As the ego-centered desires fall away, soul desires emerge. How does one distinguish between the two?

Distinctions

This is where the seven deadly sins may serve to remind us how the ego can diminish the soul. They are sloth, lust, avarice (greed), pride, gluttony, envy, and wrath. These are the self-centered desires that can lead to suffering and, eventually, the place where the ego is hostage to its shadows: the dark night of the soul. The virtues of diligence, chastity, charity, humility, temperance, kindness, and patience, in contrast, not only uplift the soul but can be a path to joy. At the root of all desire is the compulsion to live more fully.

We are desire. It is the essence of the human soul, the secret of our existence. Absolutely nothing of human greatness is ever accomplished without it. Not a symphony has been written, a mountain climbed, an injustice fought, or a love sustained apart from desire. Desire fuels our search for the life we prize. Our desire, if we will listen to it, will save us from committing soul-suicide, the sacrifice of our hearts on the altar of ‘getting by.’ The same old thing is not enough. It never will be.

—John Eldredge, Desire

The Bargain

In the transatlantic fury

when I feared

I might not survive

to see Florence,

clutching an elfin

Love Sonnets of Shakespeare,

I implored:

Lord, let me live

long enough to dare

a love poem—

In time, of course, the skies

stopped glowering.

And in the Tuscan summer’s imperial

segue into autumn,

poetry burgeoned—

It’s not only the active grace,

the glory between us:

these praise songs spring

from a holy bargain,

from my deepest desire

to live.

—Cyrus Cassells

Fear is sometimes referred to as an acronym for future event already realized. Stepping out of the present moment is an often unconscious way of refusing joy. In the poem, fear about one’s very survival is quite real which, in turn, brings on the desire to pray for help. Lord, let me live / long enough to dare / a love poem. The humility here is wonderful for several reasons: the need to ask for help and the wish to connect to the heart as the poet becomes aware of his own limitations.

At this point, everything changes from fear to the grace of creating precisely what the poet dared not before: a love poem. The holy bargain brings us back to praise and gratitude. From my deepest desire / to live. Our souls have the gift of a body with all of its inherent desires. Through those desires, the soul can be more fully realized. This goes well beyond survival and into the poetry of life.

Understanding that the holy bargain elevates the daily, worldly life to the level of the sacred; our spiritual bodies are always available to help in enhancing our lives. This happens when we move away from fear-based desires. If they come rather from love, we will always be blessed. Love feeds the soul. It is at the core of each one of us, and our desires can be its manifestation. Here is where desire and longing become interchangeable. Most people have a longing to love and be loved not only for emotional safety and security but also for the exhilaration that accompanies that. But how else can we experience desire? With and through our five senses.

The Senses

From Blossoms

From blossoms comes

this brown paper bag of peaches

we bought from the boy

at the bend in the road where we turned toward

signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,

from sweet fellowship in the bins,

comes nectar at the roadside, succulent

peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,

comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,

to carry within us an orchard, to eat

not only the skin, but the shade,

not only the sugar, but the days, to hold

the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into

the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live

as if death were nowhere

in the background; from joy

to joy to joy, from wing to wing,

from blossom to blossom to

impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

—Li-Young Lee

The soul has no other way to experience this sensuousness except through the body. The question then becomes about not only experiencing something through desire but also how to internalize it so that the soul is touched. O, to take what we love inside.

There is an ease in the poem as the poet travels back roads with hand-painted signs. This is a clue as to how the soul prefers slow time and connection through intimacy. The technological culture we live in tends to go in the opposite direction toward speed and emotional/psychological distance. So eating a peach, for instance, is about desiring to find the perfect tasting peach and discover the joy in that experience. Finding the joy adds a soul dimension by giving it a timeless quality. As if death were nowhere in the background.

This is one of the impulses behind desire: the need to temporarily banish the thought of death by way of joy. The body’s fear of death is wired directly into the ego’s desire for survival. The soul is far more interested when life opens: sweet impossible blossom. So how do we stay in touch with our desires?

Connection

Sometimes we need another person to help us return to that soul place. Most people choose connection to friends, to family, or through intimate relationship. All three options provide venues for the expression of our desires, particularly in terms of loving and receiving love. Deep connection offers a true reflection of who we are. For whatever reason, when we fall out of our loving, those friends, family, or lovers can be a valuable mirror in the search, once more, for a loving where desire transcends the ego and includes the empathy to care for the other’s emotional well-being. It is a mature way of being in the world.

Touch Me

Summer is late, my heart.

Words plucked out of the air

some forty years ago

when I was wild with love

and torn almost in two

scatter like leaves this night

of whistling wind and rain.

It is my heart that’s late,

it is my song that’s flown.

Outdoors all afternoon

under a gunmetal sky

staking my garden down,

I kneeled to the crickets trilling

underfoot as if about

to burst from their crusty shells;

and like a child again

marveled to hear so clear

and brave a music pour

from such a small machine.

What makes the engine go?

Desire, desire, desire.

The longing for the dance

stirs in the buried life.

One season only, and it’s done.

So let the battered old willow

thrash against the windowpanes

and the house timbers creak.

Darling, do you remember

the man you married? Touch me,

remind me who I am.

—Stanley Kunitz

The poem begins with the poet’s realizing the nature of his desire to connect. Once, some forty years ago, he was wild with love. Now it seems gone. It is my song that’s flown. It is also a tough and subtle place to realize that even your desire to be in love may be lost. Nature, in the form of whistling wind and rain, describes the despair he feels over the scattering of those affections. What’s to be done?

In the second stanza, the foreboding weather becomes a backdrop for curiosity about the courage of crickets to keep making music regardless of the circumstances. Crickets chirp for the purpose of mating. Now we’re back to a fundamental desire. "The longing