The Essentials: Desire

The third essential in this Rebirth Journey is desire. In an earlier blog post, I explained that desire connects you with that which is greater than you. It is a divine guidance system that you can follow knowing it only sometimes will lead you to exactly what you want, and more often guides you to something even better. In using the word desire, I am talking about deep, soul-centered knowings, not whims or cravings that come and go. Your embodied, deep-seated desires can always be trusted.

Sometimes a woman has to dig deep to even find her desires. Years of serving everyone except herself can mean her longings and yearnings are buried, and her feminine magic is buried right along with them. Perhaps you rarely think about what you want because you’ve given up on your dreams. Maybe you think your desires are impossible to fulfill so it’s better not to think of them. After a while, it’s easy to forget you ever had desires.

In the blog posts that follow, you will be introduced to practices that will enable you to unearth your old desires and birth new ones. There’s nothing selfish about having desires and standing for them. It’s actually just the opposite. As you will discover for yourself, a turned on woman who is in her pleasure and following her desire is one of the most powerful forces for good in the universe.

Yet, a woman’s desires have been seen for centuries – millennia even – as one of the most dangerous forces in the universe. This is especially true of sexual desires , which have inspired the Madonna/whore typology. There’s the Virgin Mary, who according to Catholic teachings, gave birth to Jesus without ever having sex (of course, right?) and Mary Magdalene, who was clearly Jesus’ favorite and a 13^th disciple of sorts but who is portrayed as nothing more than a prostitute. Imagine all the ways those Biblical stories still color women’s view of sexuality in the 21^st century. You can either be a nice woman and good mother or a whore.  

You can go back even further, before Christianity, to see how female desire has been demonized. We all know Eve, whose desire for the forbidden apple and her ability to tempt Adam to partake of it too, led to their banishment from their God-given Garden of Eden. The message could not be more obvious. Women who follow their desires are frowned upon by God and by man, and will ultimately lose it all.

But have you heard of Lilith? Some ancient texts mention Adam’s first wife who proudly owned her lust and her power. According to lore, she refused to lie under Adam when they had sexual relations and instead demanded to be on top. That would never do in a patriarchal system, and so not only was Lilith banished from Adam’s life, but her apocryphal story has been largely erased from memory as well.

Stacy Rukeyser, who created the NetFlix hit Sex/Life, recently wrote about the power of desire in an article  entitled “The Revolutionary Act of (Female) Desire.”

“Martyrdom is the ideal. Sacrifice, part of the gig. Gratitude, the only allowable emotion. And yet, here I was giving voice to the secret truth that it is possible for a woman to be incredibly grateful for her many blessings, to adore her children, to love being a mom — and still want more. To yearn for something dreamy and steamy and romantic and titillating. Something that will take you away – or if you’re lucky back – to a time and a place and a person you once were. To dream of being a wife and mother and ravenous sex goddess, all at the same time. Turns out creating a show about a woman who admits she’s had sex and wants more of it – better sex – without making her the villain or punishing her for her appetite is itself a revolutionary act.”

If creating a show about desire is revolutionary, imagine how revolutionary it is to actually embody your own desires and stand for them. Yet that’s exactly what I am inviting you to do. Embrace your desires, see them as divine guidance, and supercharge them with your turn on. You will be amazed at the results.

What do you deeply desire? Share them in your comments below.