The Contemplation of Desire, Part II

 

Last night I had a dream of having to go to a German lesson — a peculiar destination indeed, because I already speak very fluent German and, although it’s rusty, I hardly need formal schooling in it. So I believe the dream was actually about returning to something forgotten, from my childhood. 

My roots. Part of the kernel of my being. 

I had to be there by a certain time; and I was on foot. I had to choose an efficient path. I was in more or less familiar territory, a neighborhood I know well which is a rough approximation of where I live today, along the Sparkill Creek. I was on the other side of the creek, and I chose to walk north and cross the creek on a bridge. It was a bit counterintuitive; I could have walked south and theoretically achieved a shorter path, but I had it in my mind that by this means there was a path that led through the park, up on higher ground, that would get me there faster. 

I glimpsed the path up at the top of the hill; but built into the hillside was an enormous municipal building which doesn’t exist at all in real life. I had to slip through the grounds of the building to get to the path at the top of the hill, because they were somehow connected. I say “slip through” because there was a vague impression of potential trespass.

In attempting to thread the architectural needle of the passage to higher ground, I finally had to enter the building. It turned out to be vast inside; it was a combination of a huge 19th-century civic or government building, built in the classical style, and the Cathedral. Its state of disrepair reminded me of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul: a grand and stately memory of Empire, in a condition of elegant decay. Many of the rooms were empty; from where I entered, a staircase lead down into a huge open space, and from there back upwards into antechambers and libraries. 

Stone columns, stone floors, vaulted ceilings; it was reminiscent of the ruins of abbeys and churches repurposed as libraries and government buildings, and then left to the slow ravages of time. There was a majestic atmosphere; a sense of loss. The taste of ancient things of value hovered in the still air.

I descended into the main body of building and ascended again by another staircase, ending up in a library with exhibits of objets d’art and archaeological treasures. There was at least one shamanic object, a small carved wand or bone, with special significance. It was a representative example of a type of object once used for important rituals. At the same time, it was rather ordinary.

No one was watching me; these precious memories of the past, a collective past that belongs to all of us, were there for the taking. I was tempted to pilfer the wand, but I saw the thief in myself at work, reminded myself not to, and left. The library was up at the top of the building and as I came down, on a precarious staircase not well suited for its original purpose, I paused to take a picture in an awkward position. There was a guard there who offered me a place to sit but I declined. 

Perhaps this empty structure represents the remains of the temple I’ve erected to my own authority. Enormous and grand though it appears to be, it’s mostly empty. The only clear emotional relationship that emerges from it in me is one of a temptation which I refuse. It serves as nothing more than a distraction which delays me from my return to my original self. While in it, I forget my mission. 

It’s only as I emerge that I realize I may now be late for my appointment. I rationalize this; after all, I don’t need German lessons.

I am who I want to be. 

This seems to be the goal; but in fact it’s the problem. If I am who I want to be, I am unable to be what I am as I am. I become a product of my desire, which is subjective. In Gurdjieff’s struggle between the objective and subjective – the central pivot of his spiritual and philosophical arguments — I am always the subjective. 

There’s a territory outside of this; but I don’t occupy it. The grand temple of my own morality and authority is an echoing space which was formed with a shell of principles from a higher place; but it has fallen apart and is now filled with idle spectators and a fading impression of the former glory of its origins. It needs to repair; it needs to be brought into the present moment and filled with life again.

To be what I am as I am would actually mean to live within non-desire. For as long as I am my desires, I'm nothing more. And it's only in the moments when I don’t have desire of my own that anything real emerges within my being. 

This leads me to an observation that hasn’t occurred to me before. Whenever I experience real feeling, all of my own desire is gone. There is only one desire in real feeling, and that is the wish to become subservient to God. It is the purification of desire into a form that has no selfishness whatsoever in it: it does not touch selfishness, it lives in a different universe. And this is non-desire: a desire that arises from the objective, not my own movie theater.

Gurdjieff’s search for purity turned on this point; and conscience serves as the fulcrum whereby the lever of our awareness can lift the heavy weight of selfishness upwards out of itself. 

But as long as I'm enslaved by my own desire, I see none of this.

 May you be well within today.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.