There’s Desire Then There’s Desire

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Desire is an issue that many a spiritual path attempt to address, and understandably so. We’ve all been led astray by our desires. We’ve all found a compulsion obsessing us, crowding out other parts of our lives. We’ve all had it hurt to the point where the joy of fulfillment didn’t seem worth it.

Yet at the same time, we’ve all encountered the problems of repression. The shame that comes with people judging us for being human. Attempts to control our behavior that becomes more painful and more disruptive than the desires themselves. There are points where people get concerned about desire and then address it in ways that make it worse.

And at the bottom, doesn’t some of desire seem, well, natural? Why are we fighting it? Why are we obsessing about it? It’s like we’ve found ways to make ourselves more miserable for being human.

In my meditations and mentations I’ve been considering desire lately, and wanted to share a few insights. I think when we talk desire, both in general and in our spiritual practice, we’re often talking very different things.

At the core of desire are our natural feelings. We get hungry, we get horny, we get afraid. They’re natural, and they’re nothing to be ashamed of because they’re part of being human.

They’re also transitory, they come and go, rise and fall, get fulfilled or get forgotten. Desires are like waves on the ocean.

However in time we gain obsessions. When a desire arises, it gets trapped in our obsessions, amplified, and pursued. A single flare that would ignite and go dark is kindled into a bonfire.

In time, we can end up giant, jangling, collections of obsessions. A momentary desire can pinball into all sorts of wants and actions and unwise choices. The most innocent need can become a disaster.

There’s desires then there’s desires. I think most spiritual practices are concerned about the obsessions that trap our simple desires and turn them into something dangerous. For that matter we can become obsessed with fighting desires and create other complexes in our heads and become extra miserable.

These complexes can also set off other desires and thus other complexes! You can start being annoyed at an annoying friend, which sets off your obsession with loneliness, which then sets off another obsession that maybe you’re too judgemental . . . you get the idea.

As of this writing I’ve found this “two-teir” approach helps me a lot. At the base of me are very human needs, emotions, and desires. These come and go, the manifestation of the energies of my being, part of being human.

On top of these entirely natural desires are all sorts of psychological complexes that get set off by these desires, amplify them, and past a certain point, make life complicated. These are where our spiritual disciplines, renunciations, analyses, and meditations usually apply.

Those churning normal energies of our bodies and lives are normal. It’s when things get obsessive and complex, spirals of thoughts and feelings, that we suffer.

I found this a helpful distinction, the “substrate” and the “complications.” The substrate, the basics are what they are – they can even help me get in touch with myself. It’s the complicated obsessions I want to address. It reduces the risk I start judging myself while also acknowledging I’ve got some psychological Rube Goldeberg Devices to deal with.

Hope these thoughts help you as well. And I mean that as a sincere desire.

–Xenofact

The Creeping Stupid

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I recently read an article in Rolling Stone on a “Spiral Cult” that has spun up around AI, and of course message boards are part of it. There’s talk of emergence intelligence, resonance, and lots and lots of spiral imagery. That’s probably due to the use of spirals in our own language and in nature, giving Junji Ito Uzumai vibe.

Then again, to make it sadder, the fame of his horror story might be part of the AI inclinations. That’s where we are now, trying to figure out if horror manga seeded a real cult via AI.

As I read the article, I felt a sense of unease. We were clearly seeing some people in the throws of AI psychosis. There were quotes from posts where language seemed “off,” where was I was reading wasn’t quite right. The more I read the more I experienced an actual horror at what was going on, reminding me of weird fiction tales of strange cults and otherworldly dread.

Only I was experiencing reading this about people posting on Reddit. About something that was clearly bullshit. Yet there was that dread.

That’s when I realized what it was. I was experiencing the equivalent of exploring a cave adorned with cultic symbols or a rotting old mansion with an otherworldly reputation, and hearing strange noises. When I discover the source of the noises it’s not something terrifying from beyond, but because someone left the TV on turned to a dubstep concert.

The trappings of horrific things from beyond was there, but the cause was stupid.

What I was experiencing in the end was a kind of Uncanny Valley effect. Yes this looked like a cult, yes this hinted and strange and maybe even sinister forces, but it was an act. There was no there in there, just an advanced version of Clippy and people prompting it. The very foolishness, the very emptiness, the sense of nothing at home was what was getting to me.

It’s the danger not of some dark power from the fringes of space and time, it’s the danger of people being foolish in very dangerous ways. It was just cosplaying something from a horror film.

But that’s a reminder of the horror of the situation. We are seeing people lose their minds, lost in language mazes and pop-culture narratives. We don’t have an extradimensional horror or strange being to blame, we have but ourselves. We get the blame.

Perhaps that’s the real horror. We don’t even have sinister forces to blame.

–Xenofact

The Two That Are None

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In the Taoist-based meditations I do I’ve begun to note an interesting thing about duality and voidness. I’m going to do my best to communicate it, albeit I may sound incoherent or just plain high. Which might be the best way to communicate it, but tolerate me.

So I’ve noticed a lot of dualism or “multiplicative dualism” in various Taoist writings. One reconciles Fire and Water, or uses Sense together with Energy, and so on. Sometimes there’s “dual dualism” like Sense and Energy and Conscious and Real Knowledge. A lot of practices are about combining these elements or reconciling them – and of course the classic Yin and Yang are used among all of these various dualities.

(Sometimes it goes farther like the Tripartate Vitality, Energy Spirit, but stick with me here).

In my Secret of the Golden Flower breathwork I’m working on refining breath and mind, the mind evening and slowing the breath, and the breath being a resting place of the mind. Breath and Mind are another duality and, yes that gets tied to other dualities, which happens in Taoism a lot.

Now in doing that breathwork I’ve found that the refining mind and resting breath are not just best done together, they’re best being done “equally.” You don’t focus more on quality of breath or the resting of the mind, you’re doing both at once, both with equal measure except the occasional course correction

Now if you’ve done any kind of meditation you know those moments where you get clarity, where your perspectives shift, where there’s less you and more reality. I find that the refined breath-and-mind at once are where that starts to happen. You’re doing two things at once, but they’re also one thing, and yet also there’s something about you lighter and emptier.

And yes, as per my respect for Taoism, I’m not going to talk it overmuch since thats when you screw it up (and I’m not that good at communicating it in symbols yet).

I think there’s something about having “two things at once” in meditative practice – two things to do together, two elements to contemplate, and so on – that helps you actually get beyond your mundane self. You get to zero starting with two, but it’s hard to get there from one.

My opinion is that in meditative practices and the symbols used for them, that if we have just one definite symbol or activity or concept, there’s a risk we identify it The self will cling to any one thing as a way to anchor itself. But when your concepts or meditative practices have a duality, it’s hard for the self to settle anywhere – and as you practice, the mundane self becomes thinner as a deeper self becomes apparent.

Is this the only way to do things? Obviously not. There’s focusing exercises, forms of deliberate overload, or round-robin type mental exercises that aren’t dualistic. But I think it’s a useful insight to understand some techniques.

Sometimes you get somewhere from two places.

(I don’t think I over-described, but I’m going to have to start working on how to communicate but not over-communicate more profound experiences).

-Xenofact