Desires and Lent
Being Fat Tuesday, a lot of people are giving in, chowing down, indulging, gorging, and satisfying certain desires that they will keep in check for the next month.
Tomorrow, we will greet the season of Lent and many of us will give up something. Why will we give up something? What is the purpose? I am proposing that one of the purposes of Lent is to help us reconnect with our True Desires.
When speaking of desires, I am talking about all kinds of desires. The following are some of the questions we might ask as we delay gratification and are forced to listen to our true selves.
What am I looking to find? What am I “thirsting” for? What sparks such a fire inside? What desire is seeking satisfaction? What will truly satisfy that desire? What was designed to fulfill the desire? Can the desire be fulfilled here and now? Should I try to kill the desire? Should I seek to understand the desire, to make some sense of it? Should I ignore it and try to keep moving?
I think we are filled with a sense of strength when we choose to listen to the voice that speaks through us as we voluntarily delay gratification.
Think of your strongest desire – maybe one that gets the best of you and keeps you from reaching your potential.
I usually blindly give in and do my part in the line of falling dominoes. Always, there is the initial spark that sends a fire through my body. Always. An image. A sound. A thought. A feeling. A smell. Something triggers something within me that wants to be fulfilled. The next step is a conscious decision to satisfy the desire now, plan to satisfy it later, deny it, ignore it, or seek to hear what it is saying.
I think fasting (food, TV, music, alcohol, smoking, etc.) is one of the ways that we begin to listen to what our desires are saying instead of just giving in to them in the way we know how. The way we fulfill our desires is diverse, and the affects are diverse. But, fasting – especially the season of Lent – can remind us to listen to those desires and to seek to understand how to fulfill them or how to live in the here and now without fulfilling them.
Tomorrow, we will greet the season of Lent and many of us will give up something. Why will we give up something? What is the purpose? I am proposing that one of the purposes of Lent is to help us reconnect with our True Desires.
When speaking of desires, I am talking about all kinds of desires. The following are some of the questions we might ask as we delay gratification and are forced to listen to our true selves.
What am I looking to find? What am I “thirsting” for? What sparks such a fire inside? What desire is seeking satisfaction? What will truly satisfy that desire? What was designed to fulfill the desire? Can the desire be fulfilled here and now? Should I try to kill the desire? Should I seek to understand the desire, to make some sense of it? Should I ignore it and try to keep moving?
I think we are filled with a sense of strength when we choose to listen to the voice that speaks through us as we voluntarily delay gratification.
Think of your strongest desire – maybe one that gets the best of you and keeps you from reaching your potential.
I usually blindly give in and do my part in the line of falling dominoes. Always, there is the initial spark that sends a fire through my body. Always. An image. A sound. A thought. A feeling. A smell. Something triggers something within me that wants to be fulfilled. The next step is a conscious decision to satisfy the desire now, plan to satisfy it later, deny it, ignore it, or seek to hear what it is saying.
I think fasting (food, TV, music, alcohol, smoking, etc.) is one of the ways that we begin to listen to what our desires are saying instead of just giving in to them in the way we know how. The way we fulfill our desires is diverse, and the affects are diverse. But, fasting – especially the season of Lent – can remind us to listen to those desires and to seek to understand how to fulfill them or how to live in the here and now without fulfilling them.
posted by Dave Jones at 3:26 PM
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