[Desire] Welcome to Day 5

Good morning, lovely bag-of-cheese brethren! No need to look at the calender yet, we're still firmly in the Land Outside of Time so let's get every drop of it availble.

I wanna take a second to say thank you for being here, and taking this swim with me during this liminal space. I also want to congratulate you- this work that we've done the past 5 days (if you can call it work) this is my understanding of magic. This is embodied witchcraft. This is shadow work. This is alchemy. It does not have to be hard, or secret, or shrouded in mystery. I don't believe magic is taught, I believe it is remembered. And who doesn't like a good reminder?

You'll find the audio below, and there's a transcript at the bottom of this email for anyone who prefers to read rather than listen.

Listening time: 7:57

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• Desire Day 5 Audio: {link here}
• Transcript: below

Assignment:

Through the power of one of the most powerful forces you have at your disposal- your attention- you've remember the textures, sensations, and callings cards of what it feels like to Desire. Your quest today, should you choose to accept it, is to enjoy those sensations and let that enjoyment be enough.

ANYTHING you find and want to share, I'd be happy to receive it. I read every response. And Woo Corner will be comin atcha in a day or so. I won't promise it on New Year's Day because, come on. Still a bag of cheese.

May the pulse be with you.

Don't go back to sleep.
xoRachel

And in case you missed them:

1. ​Day 1​
2. ​Day 2​
3. ​Day 3​
4. ​Day 4​

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Transcript of Day 5:

Day 5 — Wise Enough

Welcome back. This is Desire, Day Five—the final day.

And on this last day, I’m going to ask you to take your list of desires, choose three, and break them down into actionable steps…JUST KIDDING THAT SOUNDS AWFUL!

I hope you were not expecting advice like that.

There are so many places you can get that exact advice. Places that will happily tell you to chop yourself up, prioritize the “right” parts, narrow everything down into tidy, bite-sized tasks. That’s not bad advice. It’s just not the point.

This was never a course about getting what you want.
It was a course about remembering how to feel desire—so you know what the fuck you want in the first place.

We’ve been trained to believe that achievement is the end goal. That the value of an insight is only proven once it’s been “used” to do something or get somewhere. So if you’re noticing a reflex right now—Okay, now what? What do I do with this?—that makes perfect sense.

But before we go anywhere, I want to slow that reflex down.

By now, I hope you have a felt sense of how desire shows up in your body. I hope you’re tripping over wants every five inches. I hope you’ve got a running list—even if you never pursue a single item on it. We’ve explored how desire hides inside envy, jealousy, anger, even rage. And I hope that when you think about the things you’ve uncovered, they light you up. That when you press on them, they throb. That they feel alive.

Because now we get to be curious.

You’ll hear people say that all desire is mimetic—that we only want things because we see other people having them. And sure, that happens. It doesn’t make a desire less real. That’s often how envy works.

But I also know there are desires that just are. Maybe they come from an unmet need. Maybe from an unmined talent. Maybe it’s your soul saying, hey—come this way.

Some of the things on your list might feel thrilling. Some might feel terrifying. So let me offer you some relief:

Just because you’ve identified a desire does not mean you have to do anything about it.

Desire is direction, not obligation.
It’s information.

On Day One, I described desire as a compass. A compass doesn’t give you an exact location. It doesn’t issue commands. It simply points.

And here’s the part that matters most to me:

Desire is not valuable because it gets you somewhere.
It’s valuable because it makes you more alive.

The purpose of this course was never to dramatically change your life.
It was to wake you up.

Pursuit isn’t the point. Achievement isn’t the point. Productivity definitely isn’t the point. Feeling the embodied pulse of your own wanting—that’s the point.

So yes, here’s your “action item” for today:

Let it be enough.

Enjoy it. Let your desires sit at the table with you. Have a drink. Have a laugh. Let yourself enjoy their company without needing to turn them into a plan or a project. Inevitably, some of them will become actions—but not all desire is meant to.

There’s no morality to desire.
There’s only morality to action.

Since we don’t author our desires, they aren’t authored by our moral imperative either. So which desires might you want to act on—and which might you be free to enjoy, privately, without ever doing a single thing about them?

One last note, because you may have been wondering why I haven’t talked much about sex.

In our culture, desire is often flattened into sexuality, the same way chemistry between two people is assumed to be romantic. But I don’t even think eroticism is inherently sexual. I think eroticism is aliveness.

I want to reclaim the words erotic and turned on.
Another word for erotic is alive.

Why would we limit desire to sex? How small is that?

There’s eroticism in a thunderstorm.

So your final invitation is this:
Notice how desire feels in your body. Let yourself want what you want. Feel it. Enjoy it. Let it be alive.

And let that be enough.

Thank you for taking this journey with me. May the pulse be with you.

Don’t go back to sleep.

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