Buried Desires

The Union Path Podcast - Buried Desires
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Experiencing a lot of pain can shape us in really profound ways, can really alter our sense of ourselves, our personality, our affect, our habits and behaviors.

In a lot of ways, pain can really be one of the shaping tools of life, and of course, the effect that this has on us, like most things that happen internally, we actually have quite a bit of agency over. We actually have quite a bit of say on how and how much pain affects us.

One of the more corrosive ways, pain can affect us though, is in response to our own desires, to our own true deep wants in our lives.

A lot of times through association with pain, we can learn the lesson that our desires are dangerous or even harmful, and so we bury them down. We bolt on and adopt a far more stoic and even-keeled mindset. We think that if we don't want things too much, we can't be hurt too badly.

That we equate the amount of desire that we feel with something with the amount of danger that desire holds for us. That when we want something, when we really perceive a deep attraction or pull to something, that feeling can be associated with risk. Alarms can start to go off in our head that say, danger, pain approaching.

And the unfortunate lesson that some of us learn is that the best life is the life lived by the most effective avoidance of pain. But obviously there's a trade off here, right? That pain exists on a spectrum, and on the other side is what you could call pleasure, delight, enjoyment, rapture even.

And like a lot of things, by eliminating one part of the spectrum, we can really confine ourselves to a very limited space in the middle.

Yeah sure, we can keep things from getting too painful, but a lot of times these same behaviors, these same attitudes, these same tendencies can also keep us from a whole lot of pleasure too.

And sometimes we know this, sometimes this is a conscious choice. Sometimes this is a bargain we're more than willing to strike. That We say to ourselves, you know, yes, enjoyment would be nice, but I just can't take any more pain. So I do everything I can to avoid that side of things, and if it means my life isn't as amazing as it could be, well that seems like a fair bargain.

See, that's the thing, when we've experienced a lot of pain, there's not really a tolerance that builds up. Oftentimes, it can actually get worse, we can actually get more sensitive to pain, the more pain we've been through.

We can use the sensitivity to bury ourselves, the part of ourselves that really wants that really loves,

that really enjoys is deep as we can because by letting that part of ourselves out, even by letting that part of ourselves lead from time to time has just gotten us into trouble. It's just hurt too bad.

But the problem is when we suppress any part of ourselves, we're obviously not living with our full selves. We're not living a full life, if we're only living it fractionally. We are eliminating possibility on both sides. We're limiting possibility for pain, but at the same time, we're limiting possibility for pleasure too.

And a life lived without pleasure isn't a full life. Much the same way a life lived without pain isn't a full life. But that's the thing about life, we have freedom. We have agency. We have the ability to choose how we process what happens to us, and by virtue of that processing, how we react or respond.

That free will runs underneath and through everything. It can't be lost. It's the one persistent facet of our internal lives. No matter how put upon we feel by someone else, no matter how influenced or manipulated we feel, by circumstances around us, ultimately, it's always our choice. We always choose how and how much, we react or respond to what happens to us.

But when those reactions and responses lead us to bury our desires, to subvert and suppress that part of ourselves, we live a much smaller life. We live a life that's, sure maybe predictable and comfortable, but also on some measure, I think we'd also have to acknowledge a little more bleak, a little more grim, a little just overly serious, overly examined. By limiting our life, we really start taking our lives and ourselves a little too seriously.

Even more than that, by suppressing the bright, loving, glowing part of ourselves, we cheat ourselves out of not only our experience of that part of ourselves, but our experience of living our life through that part of ourselves.

Because it's not so much what we do, it's really much more about the quality of that experience to us. And when we're only experiencing things through the button down, serious, repressed part of ourselves, then that naturally diminishes the experience no matter what we're doing.

We don't look for opportunities to seek joy, we don't find ways. Make the best of what's happening and enjoy ourselves anyway. A lot of times, situations become more about what they're not rather than what they are. We can find ourselves much more quick to complain, much more quick to engage and entertain our own umbridge rather than appreciating the miracle of what's happening around us.

But worse than that, when we lock ourselves down into this repressed, suppressed being, we may not even have access to feelings like joy, happiness, delight, appreciation, awe, wonder,

all the sublime, delicious qualities that life experience can have, we can limit ourselves from, we can sequester ourselves away from.

When we lock our desires deep down within us and we build a firewall, a boundary in between those desires and the person we're being, we're living life from a much more confined state. We're not engaging in fullness because we're not engaging with fullness. That the lesson that we've learned that somehow these desires are dangerous, that we burned our hand on the hot stove, and now we just avoid all stoves.

Isn't really a very productive lesson. It's actually pretty harmful. But again, that's our choice, that's our free will. When we've experienced pain, when we are experiencing pain, we get to choose how we experience it.

One way I think about this is when we go through pain, are we experiencing open pain or closed pain? And what I mean by that is are we allowing the pain to go through us, to be expressed, to shape us, then be integrated into how we do things? Are we trying to ignore it and suppress it and repress it and bury the pain deep down within us as well? Are we allowing the pain to make us more open and flexible? Are we compressing it down and making ourselves more rigid and hard?

I think one of the easiest ways to see this is through our own empathy. I'm sure we've all experienced some kind of pain or tragic event in life when we're on the other side, it actually made us better people. It made us more sensitive to people going through maybe that exact circumstance, maybe even circumstances similar to it, maybe any kind of pain at all.

Although the pain was terrible to go through, I think we'd make the argument that it was useful. We became a better person, we became a more whole person. We became far more empathetic and sensitive and kind and giving.

Versus if we hold that pain inside, if we compress it down, a lot of times the opposite can happen. We can get very bitter. We can be very angry. We can feel like no one understands what this experience is like because no one around us has experienced it.

We may end up doing the opposite, that instead of being more empathetic and more inclusive and considerate, instead of using pain as a way to connect us to other people through the universality of pain itself, we can use it to separate us. We can use it to make us feel more alone. We can use it to feel more put upon or even degraded by life. Can really sharpen and enhance our sense of unfairness, even cruelty through our treatment, through our own lives.

But the beauty is, or the salvation is, that we get to choose. We get to choose what path we take With everything. We can choose the path of allowing whatever happens to us to make us more open, more aware, more considerate, more kind, more generous, more conscientious, or we can choose the opposite.

A lot of times this doesn't feel like a conscious choice. We feel like things happen to us and we respond and react however we respond and react. That maybe we would like to take the "higher road" and be, you know, some sort of saintly figure that uses all of this pain to be kind to everyone. But the truth is, it just hurts too much and it feels really unfair, and I just can't do that. I just can't get there from here. I can't be positive and loving and giving when I'm buried under this avalanche of pain.

Well, I think the switch between the two can actually be a fairly subtle one. And that subtle switch is dropping our own resistance. Dropping our own pushing against what's happening to us. And if we can soften our response to what happens, then it doesn't get quite so compressed, it doesn't get quite so rigid. It can flow a little more freely.

And when we can, instead of pushing down, we can breathe, we can allow, and things don't get so concentrated and stagnant. Things like pain can actually move through us and not cause us to harden, not cause us to let this be the origin story of why we closed down.

We can stay open with our pain, let it flow where it will. Let it shape us. Let it show us something.

Let it allow us to connect with the world, pain intact. We don't have to go out in the world and fake that things are better than they really are, or feeling better than we are. How are you today? Horrible, thanks for asking.

But this goes for all feelings. They're meant to be felt. They're meant to be transient. Feelings are meant to pass through us, not take up permanent residence.

Because the thing, when we let too much pain bury our desires, we start to lose touch with who we really are. We start to lose touch with that part of us that wants, part of us that longs, part of us that thirsts, part of us that hungers. We lose touch, we lose the feeling sense of desire. And naturally, when we subvert and suppress our feelings, we become a little too logical.

We start building rules and boundaries around our behavior, which of course can be quite helpful. But over-applied, we can end up just building a prison around us. A prison that when we're living in, we desperately want someone to free us, but since we're the constructor of the prison, we're also the destructor. We put it up, we're the ones that have to take it back down again. The only access point is from within.

As long as it's up the outside world can't get to us, we're the ones that have to dismantle our boundaries, we're the ones that have to let down our guard, we're the ones that have to do something new. That have to jettison these tight strictures around what we allow ourselves to do and engage in or even enjoy.

When we realize they're not really serving us, when we realize we've just locked ourselves into a permanent grayness, that we've exiled and expunged all color from our life, we're the ones that have to lead ourselves back. We're the ones that have to start to engage with the whole of life again. We're the ones that have to get to know ourselves again. We're the ones that have to reconnect with that feeling part of ourselves that wants and loves and enjoys.

Because that's a beautiful part of ourselves, and our lives can be radically affected when we permanently exile that part of ourselves, when we label parts of ourselves as too dangerous.

We can integrate our entire beings into our lives, in fact that's what we're meant to do. Life is meant to be lived wholly. We're meant to bring our full selves into everything we do and experience what happens to us with our full selves as well.

But that can be really hard. It can be really hard to walk into the world with an open heart, when it just seems to get broken a lot.

Sounds trite and it's not much comfort, but when that happens to me, I still take a little bit of solace and, well, if my heart was broken, at least it was open. It seems to me that it would be far worse to go through life without any heartbreak, because that would mean I was never living from a heart-centered place to begin with.

For me, it would mean I was probably overly calculating, overly strategic, overly emphasizing some sort of logical or quantitative analysis of what I want through life, rather than feeling my way,

rather than trusting that a good life is whatever feels good on the inside. Whatever has qualities like joy and meaning. Whatever builds connection. Whatever I feel love for. Whatever feels like the combination of passion and deep, sometimes profound, internal reward.

Whatever feels like it lights up that golden light within me and there's a resonance there. It seems to be vibrating and humming at the same frequency that I vibrate and hum, at my deepest level. That when I'm engaging in it, I feel like I'm expressing and radiating this part of myself in everything I do.

But these are all feelings, and if we cut ourselves off from parts of us that feel, because those parts have felt pain, then we volunteer for a very unbalanced life. We volunteer for a life that doesn't have the richness and color that it could, out of a bargain meant to protect us from pain.

But obviously pain avoidance isn't all it's cracked up to be. There's side effects. Through all of our management. There are other things that have to be managed and one of those things is an absence of some of the brightest, most enjoyable, most nurturing, most soulful parts of life.

And when we diminish our feeling, we become far too centered in our minds. And obviously, as human beings we're more than just brains, we're more than just minds.

And even when we do all the things our mind wants us to do, even when we gratify our minds to the fullest extent, it still rings a little hollow. It just isn't quite satisfying. It isn't quite nourishing. There's just something missing.

And we see it all the time. We've probably experienced it, for where we chase and chase and chase these things our minds want only to experience them and then find that there's not really a satiety there. The hunger remains, the hunger persists, and so we strive on over and over and over again.

But I believe, I've experienced, going through life with my full self, engaging as fully as I can, even though I've been hurt, even though I'll definitely be hurt a thousand times again, it's worth it.

Because when we go out into the world with our full selves, and then the world then can nourish our full selves, that's a completely different experience. That's wholeness. We go out into the world with wholeness and we experience wholeness.

But it starts with willingness. With a willingness to feel, the willingness to stay open. With a willingness to say yes to whatever happens to us. Say yes to experiencing things fully, no matter how excruciating and horrendous they may be.

If we want to live a full life, we really have no other choice. Because when we bury our desires down, when we disconnect that feeling part of ourselves, we can be very easily lost. We can be very easily confused.

We can feel like there's a gap between what we want and what we allow ourselves to have or do. And that sometimes we realize we want to do something only in hindsight, only after we've randomly done it,

because we stopped listening to that part of ourself that's guiding us towards what we actually want, sometimes what we actually need.

This opening up again isn't done all at once, it's done through stages. It's done through stages of reacquainting ourselves, with ourselves. With being willing to actually feel things we haven't been willing to feel, willing to know things we haven't been willing to know. It takes courage. It takes persistence, but it's worth it.

It's worth it because we can only live a full life as our full selves and desire deep down, true desire, the desires we hold in our heart, are critical pieces of ourselves. Are critical clues to what we need in our lives, to what we need to live a full life.

And so if we found ourselves cutting ourselves off from our own feelings, from our own hearts, from our own love, from our own joy, we can always bring ourselves back.

None of these feelings or qualities ever go away. We can always reopen those channels. We can always reestablish that communication. We can always rebuild those relationships. None of these parts of ourselves are ever destroyed, because they're fundamental. We can always reintegrate, we can always reassemble ourselves into states of completeness.

Because when we do, when we find our completeness again, when we find more completeness, the more rich and rewarding our lives get, the less confusing our lives get. The more we can go out into the world, experiencing it as our full selves, fully open, fully aware, fully willing to fully live, then we'll really find what we're looking for.

Through fullness, we find fullness, and we lead ourselves to fullness through the willingness to actually be everything we already are.