The Desert Beyond Desire
The endless thirst of modern ambition – and the quiet, eternal peace that waits just beyond it.
I have come today to talk about faith. In particular, the kind of crusade that those who believe must undertake in this world. The position they are forced into by all the glitz and all the glitter.
It is the role of the strong pillar. We are assailed on many sides by the desires of the modern world. We are taught that temptation is good, and that we all have to satisfy our desires, as much as we can, without hurting anyone else or breaking laws. We become keenly aware of our desires, our wants and needs, the things we don't have. It could be a thing, or it could be social recognition, or beauty, or youth, but there's almost always something. Some kind of unfulfilled desire.
Everyone feels it, and most people spend their lives trying to figure out how to fill it. They chase the things they want but don’t have, imagining that at some point they will reach the promised land of Satisfaction, when all their desires and needs are met and they can, finally, rest easy. Finally at peace, and free of desire.
Of course, this never happens. At soon as one desire is fulfilled, another one comes and takes its place. The old one is unconsciously discarded. How many of us still look fondly on the things we chased 10 years ago? How many even remember? All we know is what we are chasing right now. The blinding surge of desire for that thing blocks out everything else. It annihilates the past, and obscures the future. But as soon as that desire is quenched, it will, like all the ones that came before, be replaced by yet another, greater one. The cycle of desire never ends.
If this is a truth, it is a cruel one indeed. It’s like being thirsty and wanting nothing more than a sip of water, and then drinking that water, gulping it down for a momentary fleeting sensation of satisfaction, before the thirst is back, just as fierce as before, if not fiercer. Again you search and search for a cup of water. Again you drink and have a moment of pleasure. And again the thirst returns. No matter how many glasses, there is still always that thirst for more.
In some cultures, this is the very depiction of Hell. Maybe we’re in it.
What some people have realized is that there is something more than desire. They’ve felt something, sensed it, lived it—some kind of experience, that made them look up from the chase, the hunt for the next cup of water, and they see the vastness around them. They are in a desert. It is dry and hot, but it is beautiful. The unrelenting sand reaching as far as the horizon. The perfectly blue sky. Even the scorching sun. Still the need and the soul and the sun, played up by an unholy thirst—there is something more. There is beauty.
This More is difficult to describe to anyone who hasn’t experienced it firsthand. It’s something you know to be solid. Strong but yielding. Bending when it has to be, but never breaking. It is peace—that word more subtle than joy. And it’s forever. A peace that stretches on forever.
This peace is very different from the satisfaction of slackly material thirst. To the untrained, you can do anything to achieve it. Actually, you can do exactly nothing. It just is. It’s always there, like a quiet whistle nestled behind all the noise. You just have to cut out the rest of the noise to hear it.
People who have experienced this in one way or another, know there is More. But what they find very quickly is that there is no way to tell anyone else about it. No way to convince them that it exists, if they haven’t experienced it already.
We start by trying. We describe it. We make arguments for why it exists. We retrace our steps to how we discovered it ourselves. We point out all the signs along the way. We point to arguments against it, and strike a difference between the existence of the absurd, the acceptance of the existence of the absurd. How would we really know? We could be in a thought experiment in the mind of some hyper-dimensional mouse (though I’d argue the recognition of which still says there is Something More. Just a very unexpected one.)
We face logical opposition, then incredulity, sometimes outright hostility. We aren’t talking about them. We point to a feeling we all had but somehow they still feel threatened. What we are saying—the idea that Something More exists—shakes them to their core.
It’s a dramatic idea. In fact, in comparison to this idea, all ideas are insignificant. As someone famous once said, “If this is true, it is the most important truth in the world.” If there is Something More, other things still matter, but this makes some things seem so insignificant. A pebble on a beach in front of the vast sea.
When we meet opposition to the idea, when we find ourselves caught in a position of preaching, it is we who are the punching bag. The anger and disbelief, the dissatisfaction from the constant material chase, comes out on us. Because if there is Something More, and they’ve been killing themselves chasing Something Less, that is a regret that may be impossible to live with.
So what can we do? We can’t tell them, or they get upset. We can’t preach, or they feel attacked. So what are we supposed to do? We must just stand. Silent witnesses to the truth. We must be the pillars that those around us depend on. When they are tired from their Material Chase, when they wonder late at night whether this is all there is, if there is Something More, we must be the rocks they depend on.
Let them come to us. Do not go out to them. You can never tell when someone is ready to accept the truth that has always been before them. They must come to it on their own.