Being With The Wanting

Full Moon Blessings, Community,

When I distill many of the catalysts that stir spiritual inquiry, I find the spirit of wanting. Take a moment to think about a parable, a verse, a sutra, a chant, a song, and you will find the fabric of wanting woven within (often coupled with guidance on how to release it). As my body stirred awake the night before writing this letter, I could hear this message come through: all I know right now is the wanting I hold. I wonder what wisdom the spirit of wanting has for us in these moments. 

I want to know why lives are diminished at the hands of the state.

I want to know why lives are diminished at the hands of our neighbors.

I want this administration to stop the foolery.

I want to know what to do next.

Early in life, I came to believe that wanting is wrong. Want for nothing and be satisfied in the lord, sermons would say. Release the grasping, the dharma teachings offer. Trust the Wei(way). Each of these remedies is wise (and resource me). But, as much as these feel like sweet medicines to surrender to, they also feel like lessons in the practice of repelling wanting. If we hold repellent practices in the layers of our body, how does this relate to other areas of our lives?

By definition, a repellent is serving or tending to drive away or ward off. I know we need to have active practices that ward off any entities or energies that desire our ill will. We hold the righteous power to repel and protect.

But, I wonder what teachings would sound like (and feel like) if they asked us to embrace the mystery of wanting. To be with it. I wonder what inner folding of divine union (like the patient lamination of croissant dough) might materialize if we did? What might this allow us to believe about what is possible? What in our liberatory movements (practices) might we abdicate in the process of not being with the wanting?

Make no mistake about it, this current matrix of over-culture is rooted up, down, sideways, and inside and out with practices and rituals of fortifying fields of wanting. Wanting is part of the spell (prayer, practice) that this president, his followers, and his leaders are satiating in so many. There appears to be a medicating (attractive) essence of rhetoric and practices that remedies (lulls) the wanting of their believers. A part of this over-culture’s power comes from its being attractive. By another definition, an attractor is a state or group of states of a dynamic physical or mathematical system toward which the system trends. Just sit with that for a moment.

What trends are you noticing? Not just the behavior and acts we’re witnessing. But the undercurrent. What is lying beneath this maze of trickery and confusion? 

Those who believe the rhetoric and practices of this over-culture (this is a battle of believability, after all) are attracted to something which satiates their field of wanting (and, so, awakens within that belief a sense of possibility). And we all know what it is to want to be saved from wanting. To be freed from wanting. This is skillful work on their part.

Even as many of us rallied to publicly demonstrate our repulsion of this over-culture, I was left wondering what it is we are cultivating within our fields of attraction. What is the wanting we are desiring to tend, and how might we cultivate practices of culture that draw from the eternal wells of beloved action - that which invites us to thirst no more. This will take even more skillful work on our part.

For me, this means surrendering to the pull to rebirth my consulting work. I’m grateful to have been nudged by Spirit at this time to weave my 16+ years of designing dialogic programs for social justice to now help cultural and contemplative institutions, entrepreneurs, and businesses materialize their visions for social healing.

I'm also offering a movement, meditation, and living tea gathering with Eszter Tóth on February 15th in Brooklyn. Sipping from living plant medicine has activated my clear-seeing in ways I never thought possible. Please join us.

And this month, I await with reverence a beautiful co-facilitation with my brother, Orlando White, in Brooklyn on February 21st, honoring 100 years of Black History Month. All BIPOC kin are invited to gather here in Restful Remembrance. 

I'm also thinking I might create an online community where we read and loosen our tongues and hearts from the entanglement of such harmful matrices so that we can reconnect to the primordial essence. (I guess this would be called a book club, but I can’t deny that I’m seeking to call in something that goes beyond the words we know.) Please let me know if this is something you’re interested in.

Thank you, as always, for receiving. I’d love to hear what comes up for you from this letter.