Rediscovering God through Your Desire

In Arabic there is this word, Ya Wadud, which translates as Divine love. To me, this kind of love is the most powerful, least disguised, and even a little scary.

The kind of love this is talking about includes sexual intimacy. (I know, right?!). If you’re like me, using the words sex and love and the divine in the same sentence feels a little off limits. I mean, growing up in European-centered culture, the divine is code for “God” and whether I believe this or not, the face of God is culturally programmed to be an old white guy with a beard.

Eww.

Let’s back up for a minute.

This series isn’t about God – especially the old white one. It’s about you. We’re exploring these traits in each of *us* and how they inform the way we interact with the world.

So, this love – this sexual longing and hunger. Let’s spend a moment with Rumi, one of the great Sufi mystics and masters, who wrote:

Desire

I desire you
more than food
and drink

My body
my senses
my mind
hunger for your taste

I can sense your presence
in my heart
although you belong
to all the world

I wait
with silent passion
for one gesture
one glance
from you”

Have you ever felt this kind of longing? I have. It feels intoxicating and dangerous and scary, but in a thrilling way—like you might just throw it all away for one chance- for a moment with the object of your desire. The scary part, for me, is wondering – “what if I did throw everything I’d ever worked for away for this moment…

AND IT WAS WORTH IT?

What then?

One moment of love and passion so intense that it’s worth everything?

Yeah, I’ve thought about it.

Ya Wadud is about tapping into that energy – connecting with it, rather than pushing it away.

What if you could have that moment of love? Of lust? Of connecton so powerful, it sweeps you away?

…and you didn’t have to give anything away.

Except

Your heart?

See why this is scary stuff?

Here’s another poem by Mewlana Jelaladin Rumi:

Be helpless, dumbfounded,

Unable to say yes or no.

Then a stretcher will come from grace

To gather us up.

We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty

If we say we can, we’re lying.

If we say No, we don’t see it,

That “No” will behead us

And shut tight our window onto spirit.

So let us rather not be sure of anything,

Besides ourselves, and only that, so

Miraculous beings come running to help.

Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,

We shall be saying finally,

With tremendous eloquence, Lead us.

When we have totally surrendered to that beauty,

We shall be a mighty kindness.

At this point, my friend, are you hopelessly confused, or uncomfortable or intrigued?

Good.

That’s one of the invitations Ya-Wadud has for us. What does it mean to surrender to the deepest, most primal emotions inside us?

What would it be like to allow ourselves to REALLY feel all the emotions that live in the deep, dark places we don’t want anyone to see?

Love.

A love so sweet, and so unconditional, that it knows.

It knows all the things that human beings have ever been ashamed of.

It knows all the things you’ve ever longed for.

And it’s still there. Waiting patiently for you to open yourself and let it out. 

Rumi says that “when we have totally surrendered to that beauty, we shall be a mighty kindness.”

Do you think he knew that the more we’re able to love ourselves unconditionally – the kinder we become toward others too?

Do you think he knew that you long for – hunger that person? and that this hunger is a normal and natural thing, perfectly worthy of being loved too?

What if, instead of trying to control our emotions, and viewing them as a sign of weakness…. what if you were able to let them flow and FEEL their power.

Be mindful if you are in a position of power over someone. This is not permission to harm.

Rather, it’s an invitation to welcome ALL of you, and one piece of this lesson is about relationship: exploring, and inviting, and accessing this intimate, profound, and powerful connection to the divine IN YOU – through another person.

It’s also about accessing this connection in THEM…

My friend, a spark of the divine lives in YOU. It lives in each of us.

This is an invitation to get out of your own head, and experience the divine with all your senses… sight, smell, taste, touch, sound.

I have one more quote for you. This time from the historian and activist Howard Thurman who said,

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs, is more people who have come alive.”

The body is more than a vehicle to carry the mind around. It is also a sacred temple of great joys and a pathway to the very heights of your being.

Welcome home. 

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