I went on an awesome ride yesterday. There was a waterfall and some cherries. I rode home from the adventure as the sun set. I don’t really ride on rocks. I have a dual sport, but I’m a road rider, really. It was a good challenge for me and the bike. I don’t really know its limits yet, or mine. I had someone with me who helped me along the way.

Also, I almost lost THOUSANDS of photos yesterday. Literally an entire TB worth of JPGs. I did something VERY stupid and reformatted the drive after plugging it into my phone. I didn’t realize what I was being asked to do. Thankfully, I’m sitting here with them, almost restored. Now I need another hard drive to restore them to, which I’ve ordered, but everything takes a bit longer to get here.

Having all parts of our lives nourished

I’m thinking today about what it means to have all parts of our lives nourished. That we hold the belief that we can’t have it all. Can’t both have a great career and a great family life. Adventure suffers to raise kids, or if you’re not hating your job, you’re not doing it right. It’s all wrong. It’s all conditioning. It’s all identifying with the pain body, with something that keeps us limited. It might be ruled by anxiety, ancestral wounds, societal conditioning, fear—whatever it is, if it’s gonna keep you limited, fuck off.

It’s one of the pieces of conditioning I’m really working to remove. When I first moved into the RV, I literally said to everyone, Welp, I guess I’m gonna be single for the rest of my life, no one will fuck me if I live in an RV. I don’t wanna be fucked right now anyway because I’m in my celibacy life, but at the time, I was truly like: if I have this, I can’t have that.  

And we can’t do that to our lives. We have to envision it all. We have to see the buffet of everything we want to have, because desire is sacred, longing is a driving force, and know that if we can see it and feel it, it’s ours for the taking. Know that it’s possible and feel that in the body. It might take time, or it might not come all at once, but we don’t allow the part of us that says I can’t to win.

Understanding desire

Spiritual people talk a lot about desire. And I’m one of those spiritual people. For a long time, I didn’t let desire be a guide. We want something super big that we have no idea how to get? Oh, we can’t have that, or oh well that’s not for us because it doesn’t fit in X, Y Z, or that’s too hard, so we can’t do it. I think MOST of society does this in one form or another. And it’s a shame because desire is the soul’s language of expression.

Desire is intended to pull you into the void, into the space of transformation. It comes from somewhere deeper than your mind, and often, it doesn’t make sense. It’s like I wanna go live in an RV and just figure it out! YA, WE FUCKING DO. Desire, true desire THAT is your soul speaking. It rises up from your pelvis and your heart at the same time. It’s a pulling force. It’s erotic in the sense that it doesn’t always make sense why you want it, but you know you do, and you have such a strong enough pull to it that you’ll figure out how to get there, whatever it takes. I have to have it. I have to go into the void, into the unknown.

It’s the thing that lights your eyes with that wild glimmer and makes you remember who you are. That’s not just a want. And giving in to too many wants is a weakness, a waste of our energy. The pull is often a unique challenge, a door we don’t know how to open, a feat we have no current ability to accomplish. Desire climbs the mountains and births new life.

Some might call this “motivation,” but I think that’s bullshit (I’m cursing a lot today in this). Motivation feels like the term science gave us when it was trying to sterilize the mystery, or feed you something that gave you a half-truth about what’s going on internally. Motivation is fleeting. Motivation gets you to do the laundry or eat the vegetables. Motivation is what they measure in labs, what they graph in studies, what they try to engineer into productivity systems and morning routines. It’s the marketable, pep-talk. But desire? Desire doesn’t give a damn about anything, and it doesn’t care what the timeline is.

Kairos vs Chronos time

Because desire works in Kairos time, or sacred time. This is qualitative time, or the right time, the ripe moment, the divine unfolding. It’s the time of transformation, synchronicity, and intuition. Most of our lives are operating on Chronos time or clock time. It’s linear, quantitative, structured. It’s schedules and deadlines.

• Chronos: time you measure

• Kairos: time that measures you

A lot of spiritual people talk about balancing Chronos and Kairos, because we have the ability to live and operate in both, and when we get too much of one, we lose a lot of what it means to be human. A largely secular society, only even recognizes Chronos time.

But, desire operates in Kairos time. It shoots up a flare when the timing is ripe and the portal’s open. It won’t care that you have a business meeting the next day or that you already committed to watching 10 seasons of Game of Thrones. Something else is moving, in spaces you can’t see or understand, to bring you to transformation. Desire operates in the void space, the erotic, the pulling towards a future, and creating a new. It’s the closest thing we might have to knowing the energy that God used to create.

I’m at the point in my writing today where I don’t know how I got here, but I’m glad I got it down. 

So let’s summarize:

• All forms of I can’t are limitations we put on ourselves, and we need to tell them to fuck off. Literally. Try it. Try the phrase, “I give away this limitation.”

• Desire is the erotic pull asking us to make transformation.

• Desire operates on Kairos time, or sacred time. It doesn’t care about deadlines and plans. It just wants you to do the challenge, see the thing, take the change. Learn and grow.

• Motivation is not desire. Motivation gets us through the to-do list. Desire is your soul bringing you to more.

• Desire needs discernment. It’s not wanting. It’s likely not about money or sports cars. It’s not a new bag or a good job. It’s bigger. Knowing the difference in your body is a journey in and of itself.

And now, for the rest of the day, I’m allowing myself to truly feel the joy and expansion of what it would mean to live in desire without the ‘I can’t’. For my work to feel really good (meaningful, purposeful, tangible), for my spiritual life to be nourished and big, for a great, wonderful, masculine partner to be around and supportive, for my art to be flowing and impactful, for my community to be playful and wide, for kids to be around, happy and healthy, and wise, and for my spirit of adventure, of RV life, of seeing new places and traveling to be equally supportive. I’m giving away all of my limitations and feeling the desire of the life I want to live to be fully here and now.

With a hell yeah brother,
Val