At 2:17am on December 23rd the moon was new. Earlier this evening, at 6:08pm, She became full. I’m not sure there’s ever been a half-cycle gap between a New Moon and my professed intention before, but here we are.
I find that I’m still digging into the feelings around Wanting from September’s focus. In that post, I wrote “Receiving is contingent on generosity, reciprocity, consent, and a whole variety of other conditions – but the Wanting is solely on us. We’re allowed, and even encouraged, to Want – regardless of the outcome.”
But what happens when we’re not truly certain what “we” actually want?
Following this thread of thinking, I happened upon something called mimetic theory, proposed by 20th century French philosophical anthropologist René Girard. In describing mimetic theory, Girard wrote that “Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires.”
This resonated with my October post on Reciprocity – where I had said that “what we Want might be what another desires to receive, and that what they are free to give fulfills our Wanting.” As I burrow deeper into this I see seeds from my childhood – where it was safer for me to want something that had a high probability of being provided, rather than follow my own bliss.
Last month I focused on Surrender – and my feeling when confronted with an unfulfilled want, it might be better to step away from the desire than continue to pursue it in what might be an unhealthy way. This was summed in the last line, to Surrender – but don’t give yourself away.
In that same focus on Surrender though, I talked about the Wheel of Consent and noted that ‘Giving/Taking/Allowing/Receiving are all Actions’. Perhaps the healthy option to divining desire, and perhaps even fulfilling it, is not by letting the chips fall where they may, but rather to affect a change in our Action.
Everything worth having is worth working for – but sometimes that work is less about the active pursuit of a desire, but rather the work to understand our motivations and what that want or desire actually serves. What do we want, and why do we want it? How do we answer those questions when our perception of our intrinsic wants might have been blocked or stunted?
So the focus for this cycle is Action – and for solace on the journey I’ll turn to Pete Townshend and The Who, and the second half of the bridge to this cycle’s song:
I don’t know where I’m going
Townshend, Pete. “Let’s See Action.” Hooligans, 1981, https://www.songfacts.com/lyrics/the-who/lets-see-action.
I don’t know what I need
But I’ll get to where I’m gonna end up
And that’s alright by me