The Endless Invitation

To turn and face desire is not weakness, not indulgence, but of tremendous fortitude.
In a world that compels you to fixate on threat and panic,
to move toward what draws you is to go against the stream.

There is no obstacle between the one who desires and the desired.
What we call obstacles are rites—initiations to prepare us. To sharpen the senses so we can recognize desire when it arrives.

Desire wants us to enter, inhabit, and know the
inner workings of fear. “I love you too much to not have you see inside of your darkness,” it says. The path is never around but always through—the unloved, the foreign, the feared.

With breath hot, desire comes through us, warming the cold, prickly edges into openings and revealing themselves for us.
Inside every fear is what of ourselves lies discarded, awaiting love. What you hate out there is yourself, estranged.

There is only Eros—or Eros in disguise.
Desire hides in
the usual suspects: death and dying, romance and finance, loneliness and shame.

She crouches inside, waiting for your timid or skeptical eye, drawing you into the concentrated
love inside each fear—not just to heal, but to create.

Fear is desire’s fiercest and most loving guardian. She demands your nakedness, that you carry no weapons, that you be splayed open to receive.
She will not respond to desperation, panic, or demand.
Only your indestructible one can hold her. Because desire, in the feminine, is to be held.

And in a moment of panic, if you can stop the thrash and ask, “What is desired here?”—
you will have found the key. But only if you’ve met enough fear for this to become your way.

This is the way of desire. The way of calming the waves.