On the Clarification of Desire: Marc Gafni
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Desire is Holy. And not always to be acted upon. In fact often not to be acted upon.
The biblical mystic lovingly counsels us to be with yourself and gently watch your desires as they come and go. Not to eradicate them, not to get off the wheel of suffering which they are said to create. We are invited to engage in berur teshuka, the clarification of desire. To love someone is to wait on their desire, to watch it stir and delight in its presence, to help it crystallize and form.
Eros is to be on the inside, including the inside of your desire. What being on the inside does is invite a person to clarify his desires, yet not transcend them. True desire is attained through the deep meditation in which you access the internal witness. This is a place of detachment, from which you survey with penetrating but loving eyes all of your desires. This place of internal witness allows you to move beyond an addictive attachment to any particular one. At that point the person engaged in berur — clarification — does not abandon desire. Rather she moves to connect to those desires which were truest to her deepest and most authentic self. It is in the empty space “between the spasm and the desire” that the person is born.
marc gafni
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