In every human soul and being, the strongest desire present is to merge with the divine, to become one with God, indistinguishable from divine light. Our whole being aspires to be absorbed into Source light. Independently of how conscious we are of this dynamic, our whole being thirsts for the sublime, the divine, the transcendental. When we feel cut off from this divine spark, when we are under the impression that we have lost our access and fall into the illusion of separation, our being is in distress, and we experience lack.
When we do not, then, consciously choose to rebuild our relationship with the divine, we will try to replenish the parts of ourselves that feel empty through external means and sources. These sources can be substances that give us a temporary high such as drugs or alcohol, it can be compulsory buying, compensating with food, sex, etc. Those external sources of temporary satisfaction can never replenish what we receive from a connection to our own divine source. And so, our hunger remains and even grows over time, we become more and more insatiable, our appetite grows and the ways in which we seek to compensate our lack of connection become more extreme and destructive – to ourselves and others.
We tend to think that desire is a bad feeling, because in most cases, it leads to bad decisions. Making bad decisions does not mean we are inherently bad, we just fall into the trap of desire, lack and compensation because this is how we are conditioned to function from a very early age. We are constantly compared to others which creates feelings of inaptitude, jealousy and ultimately – desire and lack - the holy grails of any consumer society. We cannot extricate ourselves from this, for it is so embedded in the way our world functions, so we should also be prepared to see the same dynamic and energy appear when we are in a spiritual or religious context.
Desire is not a bad thing in and of itself. It is part of the spiritual experience and can even be a motor for inner and spiritual growth. Cultivating a relationship with the divine is very much like falling in love. In many mystical traditions, Sufism being one example, God is seen as the beloved and we become the beloved of God. Because our hearts and souls are so filled with longing and are blossoming with love, we are open to receive the downpour of divine light. We become the vessel; the vial filled with divine essence. Another example of divine love and desire comes from the Jewish tradition where we find it in the song of songs: a love song between a man and a woman, an allegory for divine love and our love for God, the story of the union between the divine feminine and the divine masculine. There are remnants of this understanding of desire that fuels the love of God in the Catholic church: nuns who enter the orders become the bride of God, the bride of the church. This tradition is a remnant of the sacred marriage rites, the hieros gamos – the sacred marriage between the divine masculine and the divine feminine. Even though in its current form the Catholic church has lost this connection to its mystical and historical roots, even within its recent structure and doctrine some mystics intuitively understood and accessed this state of divine love. Hildegarde de Bingen’s and Teresa of Avila’s divine ecstasies strongly resembled an orgasmic state, Thérèse de Lisieux’s religious poems and writings are filled with burning declarations of love and desire. The desire that is stirred is intended to awaken us – to awaken the longing to resuscitate our inner wellspring and fall in love with the divine.
We get confused when we feel desire for a person that we associate with a spiritual or religious experience. We have seen the examples of many gurus falling from grace for inappropriate sexual encounters with their students or followers, we have heard the stories of trauma and confusion deepened by abuse inflicted by people seen as spiritual mentors or references. Because we have excluded desire from the religious or spiritual experience, we were left with two options when we encountered it: ignore and suppress it – which led to self-denial and abuse or act upon it consensually and feel guilty afterwards.
Because our strongest desire is the desire to move closer to the divine, when we meet someone who is (seen as) a vessel of divine light, who holds a frequency that we feel like we can no longer access ourselves, our desire is automatically stirred. This explains the physical or sexual pull that some spiritual teachers and gurus have over their students. The desire that is generated, is actually a pull to get closer to the frequency this person is holding, but is often mistaken for physical attraction or sexual desire for the person itself. We think we desire the person radiating this light, but it is our soul that recognises and wishes to access the presence of the divine.
Instead of acknowledging our desire and recognising that was is desired is a physical experience of divine love, many people then go into predatory mode. We might try to get closer to people who carry a lot of energy to fill our cup from the wellspring of the other person, consciously or not consciously seeking to extract some of their essence to fill up our own dried-up reserves of divine love. Spiritual teachers and religious mentors often abuse this situation as well – and this behaviour has not got better with the rise of social media, many people in the spiritual realm have started baiting clients with sexy pictures of themselves. We do this because we have got used to abuse. We are used to taking from others and we are used to being taken from. If we have something that others want, we can exploit that asset or talent and if someone has something we want we feel entitled to take it from them.
This confusion around the energy of desire and the misconduct that is created by the confusion is not new. I believe it has always been part of the spiritual experience. I believe, for example, that this is a situation and energy Mary Magdalene and Yeshua had to encounter and deal with very often. They were such powerful beacons of divine light that I expect that many people who met them instantly fell in love with them and that this confused many of them. Some people were probably able to recognise the attraction for what it was, they were in the presence of beings touched by divine grace. Many others must have felt confused, they felt sexual desire, which could then stir a need to possess, to consume, to have some of that energy they didn’t. With the patriarchal society already well in place and the religious structure of the time already rooted in guilt and sacrifice, many people probably felt guilty about their feelings and tried to suppress them.
I also believe, however, that Yeshua and Mary Magdalene must have been very aware of this and had probably very strong boundaries in place. This and the strength of their teachings would have allowed most people to alchemise and transform the desire they felt for them into pure love.
This, however, wasn’t possible for all. Mary Magdalene was a charismatic, highly educated, outspoken, very visible woman who was favoured by Yeshua and who broke the codes of the time. More than enough to stir feelings of desire in the men present. Many of those men held her and Yeshua in such high regard that they were able to transform their feelings and direct their longing towards the divine, but not all. Peter is a classic example of this, a product of the religious context of his time and on a quest to become a holy man himself, feelings of desire must have triggered deep guilt and resentment within him. If he could have understood that he was longing for the presence of the holy spirit within Mary Magdalene, history might have been very different.
All of us who are active as spiritual seekers and/or teachers have a responsibility to take, we need to learn how to consciously deal with desire, without repressing it or allowing it to spiral into situations of abuse. We need to do this if we want to build healthy relationships in our spiritual communities. It means not using desire to attract more clients, to draw attention to ourselves and it means not trying to take someone’s energy when we can cultivate our own source of nourishment within. This means recognising desire when it is stirred within us and then directing it towards the divine, allowing it to nourish our longing to get closer to Source, to God, fuelling our inner growth and expansion.
Anaïs T.
