[Desire] Welcome to Day 1

Greetings, good people of the internet!

And welcome to the Land Outside of Time- those 5 days between Christmas and New Years Eve where nothing feels real and we're in a daze from eating cheese as though it's about to be outlawed.

Since we're in this liminal space anyway, we might as well rummage around in our ribcages!

For the next 5 days, I'll send you a short audio. These are meant to be listened to while walking, or otherwise doing inane tasks, but it's your BBQ. Each audio has a task assigned, or rather an invitation- something you can DO. They will all be fun and illuminating to accomplish, I promise.

Today we start with something deceptively simple: remembering what desire feels like for you. In your meatsuit.

Listen to the audio below, or if you're more of a reader than a listener, there's an abbreviated transcript at the bottom of this email.

Listening time: 11:49

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• Desire Day 1 Audio: {link here}
• Transcript: below

Assignment:​
Recall a moment when you desired something with absolute vigor and clarity. Describe the sensation of wanting in your body. I highly recommend writing this down, but only after you FEEL it. If your brain wants to take over, drop your awareness back into your body. We're not after theory- we're after a real, living, pulse.

If you fancy, you can hit reply and tell me what it felt like for you. I read every response.

Stay with the pulse, and-

Don't go back to sleep.
xoRachel

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Transcript of Day 1:

Day 1 — The Nature of Desire

Welcome to Day One of Desire—five days to reconnect with your own sense of wanting (aka: figuring out what the fuck you actually want). This work is meant to be listened to on a walk or while you’re doing something mundane. You’ll get a short assignment each day, and yes—it's going to be fun.

Before we go further, I want to be clear: this course is not about logic. It’s not a tidy theory you can think your way through. Desire isn’t logical or rational. It can’t be understood so much as felt. Which means I’m going to ask you to feel things—and for many of us, that is already the problem.

Most of us are disconnected not only from what we desire, but from the feeling of desire itself. And honestly, we’re often afraid of knowing what we truly want. That fear is reasonable. Desire is powerful. It creates and destroys in equal measure. Once you know what you desire, you can’t unknow it—and some part of you already knows that.

Here’s a hypothesis I want you to try on: we don’t author our desires. They move through us. Think of a time when you realized you wanted something and immediately thought, “Fuck. Now I have to deal with this.” You didn’t choose that desire—it disrupted your life. It wasn’t convenient. You might even have wished not to want it.

So if we don’t author our desires, who does? My answer is: the divine. Not a distant holy being in the clouds, but something intertwined with the messy, earthly reality you’re already living in. I think of true desire as divine counsel from the most interconnected part of myself.

When I say “desire,” I’m talking about something different from preference. Wanting cheese is a preference. Knowing you’ll never be at peace unless you write that book—that’s desire. Feeling called to stand in the rain on a balcony in Portugal for reasons you don’t even understand—that’s desire. You don’t have to understand it. You just have to listen.

So why reconnect to something this disruptive? Because desire is also generative, especially in creative work. A human being in touch with their true desire is fully alive, and that is something we deeply need—people willing to feel, to inhabit their bodies, and to follow the congruence of the soul.

There’s a line from the film Dangerous Beauty (a deeply underrated movie) where a courtesan says, “You must understand desire, because it is wanting that keeps us alive.” So I’ll ask you: do you want to feel alive? Do you want to be in your body—expansive, shameless, and guided by something deep and true?

If you’ve ever been told to “trust your gut,” you know what I’m about to say: you can’t trust your gut if you don’t know what your gut feels like. Desire is embodied. Without the body, we’re just thinking about things.

Which brings us to today’s practice: remembering the somatic experience of wanting. I want you to recall a time when you felt desire clearly. Where were you? What were you looking at? Were you thinking about it or touching it or imagining it? Put yourself back in the moment and ask: where do I feel this in my body?

To give you a sense of the range, here are some examples people shared with me:

• tingling in the skin
• a rising tone through the spine
• heat in the heart
• full-body prickles and a hunger that propels movement
• warm vibration in the root chakra
• a widening of the eyes and a deep involuntary sound
• bright warm light in the chest
• molten heat low in the body, like an inverted volcano

For many people, desire feels warm—but it may not for you. It might feel sharp or restless or hollow or like wearing a ridiculous invisible hat. What matters is that you notice it.

Once you’ve identified your sensation, sit with it for a moment and see if you can intentionally summon that feeling again, as if out of thin air. This is the beginning of remembering. This is the beginning of being in relationship with your desire.

And please write it down. You think you’ll remember—but you already didn’t remember. That’s why we’re here. Give yourself something to return to later.

Enjoy, and I’ll see you tomorrow.