Brother Richard

Desires for

pleasure or gluttony of the senses rather than a well-ordered use of them.

Even the desire to be distracted.

The desire to be anywhere other than here and now.

The desire that others should live the way I want them to live.

The desire that my own ego should be able to dictate how the world is.

And so we see that we exist, at least in part, between positive and negative desire.

the meditator accepts both as part of themselves and recognizes the truth of their presence without fear, without attachment, without grasping.

And so we can ask ourselves internally, what do I need to do

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.