Brother Richard

to cultivate the higher desires and to purify the lower desires.

We see by this that even the lower desires of the animal soul are not wrong in and of themselves, but only become wrong when they are used in a way that is damaging to yourself or to others.

The desire for power, for example, can be used in a good way when it is a desire for agency to do good.

Even the desire for food and drink is a good thing in and of itself, ensuring our survival and even the good pleasures and conviviality of the table.

All desires start out as fundamentally good.

It is what we do with them that matters.

So we can ask ourselves, how aware of the patterns of my desires am I?

And what do I do with them when I become aware of them?

Do I invite the grace of this practice to help me to see truly, to transcend the lower desires and to invite them to be aligned with the higher desires?

What desires am I subject to

rather than finding a way of using them for good.

This is only the beginning of this practice.

There is a lifetime of work present within it, but it is always good to begin.

And so we can take with us the intention

to be more aware of the operating desires of the animal soul, to breathe, to pause before leaping to their fulfillment, to ask ourselves, would their fulfillment lead to the higher desires?

or to an experience of lower desire fulfillment that just leaves me in a circle of echoic action.

And so our meditation on these desires can become the beginning of true and full ethical discernment.

an essential part of the meditator's path.

For now, though, we simply rest in the awareness of their existence.

We remember that all of the desires in their fundamental origin are good.