Infusion of Desire

“Honor your goal to create a world by burning with desire. Be incandescent—or else nothing will happen.” – Eric Maisel

Besides being one of my favorite words (right next to passion), desire can be what makes the difference in our ability to achieve goals and live life with incessantly luscious intent. Desire is that elusive inspiration that gives us a reason to feel the ache of hunger and rightfully adds to our creative appetite. Desire gives us fuel for an aimless direction of passion and as artists we harness that passion to support our reasons to create. Without desire the magnificent colors in the world around us dull in its absence, as does our creative perception. Desire, passion and hunger are an artists pulse, a creator’s lifeline, a lover’s sole intoxication and without these in full affect, life in all realms stands still. So how do we maintain this hunger and feed our own beast of passion enough so it does not turn to destruction as the flipside of creation? How do we rekindle desire when we can barely move forward in its absence? How do we gage when desire is running out, without succumbing to the panic of it dwindling?

The first thing to realize is desire is alive and always present, under the surface of everything we encounter, including ourselves. The desire we will experience depends on our receptiveness to its seemingly evasive presence. Each moment offers a potential for the spark of desire, but will we recognize it, entice it and hold onto the reins as it takes us on a ride? To maintain desire we need to shamelessly harness desire and seduce its companionship, seeking to become an opportunist of desire in each task, event and interaction we are a part of in our daily lives.

Each person has ideal circumstances that specifically increase their sense of desire, though the avenue needs to be personally redefined periodically to have a heightened impact. Maintaining desire is an ongoing task and we must be willing to approach it as such, we cannot stand still and expect its touch. We must do the “work” of enticement, playing the field of inspiration to allow ourselves new experiences as well as devote ourselves to our driving internal sources of inspiration that need nutrition and placement in our lives.

As artists it is also important not to feel guilty for searching outside of our chosen field of focus for inspiration, every drop of inspiration adds to your pool of desire and can be utilized in which ever ways you wish. Instead of relying on our artistic medium to supply us with what we need to continue creating, we need to go out and search for alternative ways to infuse ourselves with desire. Whether it be going to an opera, using our imagination to dream up a passionate love affair with a complete stranger in a foreign country, watching the sunset, watching the sunrise, engaging fully in an enticing conversation, taking a dance class, trying something we never dreamed of doing……there are many ways right at our fingertips to rekindle desire. All we have to do is take the leap, and just do it….shamelessly, expressively and reverently!

To ignite your desire now, try the following:
1) Define desire. What does desire mean to you?
2) What can you imagine that would fill you with desire? Explode onto a page with all of your ideas.
3) Choose 1 idea to focus on this week, or chose one per day, there’s no limit to how much desire you can add to your life! Allow yourself to be limitless.
4) Choose where you want to funnel your heightened desire…then make something happen!
5) Repeat again…..and again…..!