“How do I work with Unfulfilled Desire?”
A Reader writes:
“I’ve seen references to Unfulfilled Desire in your work on blocks, but no detail about it or about how to work with it. Unfulfilled Desire characterizes my life in all areas, and I’m wondering if you could say something about it and how working with it differs from working with blocks.”
Dear Reader:
Unfulfilled Desire is one of the four “territories” of difficult life issues that Barbara McGavin and I have explored in our Treasure Maps to the Soul* work.
The four territories are:
– The Swamp of Action Blocks
– The Wilderness of Addictions
– The Pit of Depression and Chronic Bad Feeling
– The Mountain Top of Unfulfilled Desire
Of the four, Unfulfilled Desire is the most difficult. Each territory is characterized by a War, and in Unfulfilled Desire, the War is between the part of us that holds onto the desire even though it is unfulfilled and the part of us that wants us to let go of the desire.
Unfulfilled desire is painful — often very painful. From the point of view of the part of us that wants us to let go of the desire, the way to let go of the pain is to let go of the desire. “Be realistic,” it says. “Face the facts. Settle for something easier to get.” It may even take on a critical tone and tell us there is something wrong with us, SO we will never get what we want. Its underlying purpose for these nasty remarks, however, is oddly benevolent: it wants us to give up so we aren’t tormented by desire any longer.
And then there is the part that holds onto the desire. It doesn’t care if the desired object, person, or state seems unobtainable, it WANTS it…and it knows that settling for something less will not satisfy it.
This is a War between parts that itself is painful and goes to the very nature of what is real and what is possible.
So how do we work with Unfulfilled Desire?
To work with Unfulfilled Desire we need Self-in-Presence, lots and lots of it! We need to acknowledge, over and over, “Something in me desires or longs for…” AND “Something in me says I should give up or settle…” and keep doing that as often as necessary as we (probably) keep slipping into identification with one part or the other.
From the position of Self-in-Presence we will be turning toward first one part, then the other, to compassionately get to know what is under the urgency of its position. Ultimately we will hear — and feel — what each part is wanting us to be able to feel.
After years of longing for a particular person for my life partner, and doing a lot of Focusing with the two sides, the longing finally shifted to a longing for a particular KIND of person. In session after session I felt the longed for body feeling: supported, met, both strong and vulnerable. Within a few more months I had met him, and we are still happily partnered after 12 years.
*This work is now called Untangling.
