the art of wanting
Saturday November 23, 2019, 10-5pm
Mindfulness Ireland, Dublin
… desire is to own the wanting .... And in order to own something, there needs to be a sovereign self that is free to choose and, of course, feels worthy of wanting and feels worthy of receiving. That’s why desire is so intimately connected with a sense of self-worth.
Esther Perel, 2019, in conversation with Krista Tipett
The human ability to ‘want’ seems, on the surface of things, such an apparently basic capacity. Nonetheless, for many of us it is not simple – to know what we want, to know how to want, to be capable of bringing forth our needs and wishes to others. Yet this capacity is pivotal: the energies we bring to our wanting and desiring have profound and incalculable influence on how our lives unfold.
This workshop offers a rare experience to focus on our relationship to wanting. We will open up this territory from a range of angles, exploring the links between childhood conditioning and how our wanting and desiring is expressed or curtailed as adults. Each of us carries these themes uniquely, and we will identify different strands within our personal relationship to wanting: we may feel entitled and confident in certain kinds of wants, mute and despairing in others. We may trust that the world will take our needs and desires into consideration, or be convinced that we must fight fiercely or suppress our true wants in a non-responsive universe. We may associate judgments of ‘selfishness’ or immaturity with wanting, or see our wanting as a passionate source of creative nourishment - not just for ourselves but for others.
Though we rarely look directly at this ability to want, doing so can be potent and life-affirming. Everywhere, analysts, psychologists and spiritual teachers point to the importance and healthiness of desiring; to the power of clarifying our intentions; to the beauty and necessity of entrusting our visions to the world and to each other; to bestowing our desire with the blessing of potential collaboration; to exposing ourselves to a potentially responsive universe; to learning to take yes for an answer, while also learning to survive the inevitable, necessary no’s that come our way.
Full lives require these things. This workshop will explore how as adults, we might deepen and enrich our capacity to want and to desire. Maximum Participants 12.
inquiries (by email) welcome: emmapb@me.com
i explored one angle of this topic in a blog earlier this year: desire in a responsive world