Virtue 10: Desire-Joy-Bliss - The Golden Ball - The 12 Virtues of the Primordial Artist

This is part 13 in a series exploring the 12 virtues that can free artists from cultural enslavement.

ATTEND

Duty to human values and expectations has been a profound enslaving factor for me in my life. Having grown up in a home environment of command and control, duty was the key bonding agent. Duty connected us to each other, duty demanded obedience, duty coordinated actions, duty instigated projects. Duty was the air we breathed.

The problem with duty is that its joyless. It never ends. If it is attached to a human master, it is ever changing, ever fickle. Do this. Why did you do it like that? No! Do this instead. You did this wrong! Why are you always sabotaging me! No one understands what’s at stake here!

When duty is applied to art, the joy is gone. The audience becomes our master, the client, our own personality becomes a slave driver. Johnstone said, “If there is no joy, do not persist.”

Campbell described what happens when one fails to follow their bliss. When you choose the money, the duty path, you immediately find yourself in the wasteland – where joy and bliss are gone and only empty, dried out forms remain. I have lived in this wasteland more than once in my life. It is a terrible place to be, it has no end, and it cannot be fulfilled by what it seeks. It seeks “completion of the dutiful task” – but that task will never be done.

Joy / Bliss / Desire as a virtue says that if you are not finding any joy or any bliss in what you’re doing, you’re doing the wrong thing and/or you’re doing it wrong. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong. Something is so wrong, in fact, that if you keep going in this way, it will suck the life right out of you. You will find yourself, very quickly, very completely, where life and joy and love are gone and job, home, family, social standing, all become empty, dried out nightmare apparitions of what they might have been.

Joy killers:

Too much structure
Too much perfectionism
Too much seriousness
Too much pressure on outcome

Joy / Bliss / Desire requires discernment. We live in a strange place of billboards and ads and stars and pornography. Our genuine desire is susceptible to external manipulation, indeed most advertising is exploiting this fact. Because our desire operates so strongly in us, it can be used against us. The task is to own our desire, to make conscious and invite awareness of our desire. That we can be masters of our own action, not slaves to human commerce manipulation. To discern between triggered lust for x and soul calling is not straightforward nor easy, but is required of the artist.

Desire has the ability to become a link to the divine. A renewing, powerful link to messages from the great mysterious. As artists, we must embrace our desire, we must embrace our joy, so that we can renew and strengthen our relationship with god / the mystery / the muse.

ENVISION

The fairy tale Iron John provides a powerful allegory. In it, a young man learns his father the king has captured a wild creature – a hairy terrible man – from the deep woods and has kept him in a cage in the courtyard. The boy goes to the courtyard to see who this man is. The boy has with him his golden ball, and while playing with it he accidentally looses it in the cage. The terrifying man says he will return the golden ball, but only if the boy frees him. The boy doesn’t know how. The man says that the key to the cage is kept under his mother’s pillow. The boy waits til his parents are gone and steals the key. He frees Iron John and begs him to take him with him for his parents will beat him when they find out what he has done. Iron john agrees and takes the boy on his shoulder and flees the castle and the story begins.

Campbell called it “the death-defying libido”. The libido is the answer to tragedy, to death. Libido is the waking up of energy that seeks out new purpose, that moves in unexpected directions, that is the plant stretching toward the light. Libido includes sexuality but it is not limited to it. Libido is the life that is created with something new. The child born is the death-defying libido incarnate. the perpetual creeping death of old age is obliterated with new life. Parents have new purpose, new connection to the divine, as their children see everything for the first time.

The golden ball the boy looses is that libido – that power. As he is reaching maturity, it is no longer acceptable to his parents, and he has to leave the castle for it to continue to grow into his adult incarnation. If he remains within the confines of his parents exceptions, his golden ball will remain lost.

The Libido is also the connection with the living god. Connection with the life-affirming force of the great mysterious. The grow force, the build force, the strive force, the explore force, the discover force, the reach toward the sun force. Desire is the emergent face of Love. Love holds all, desire reaches and strives to build and grow. Desire acknowledges the value of newness, of regeneration, of beginning. Desire breathes new life.

I have a personal story to tell with regards to this. It involves sex work, and so those not interested in the topic or those feeling it is not appropriate to their understanding of this virtue should skip to the paragraph which begins “In naming this virtue…”. When my marriage was at its worst, and we hadn’t made love in months, I found myself pulled to a strip club. I had never been before, I knew my wife would not have approved. And yet I felt called. It was desire. I had great guilt about the impulse, great shame. And yet something in me pushed me towards it, some part of my shadow.

When I finally stepped in the door on a Wednesday afternoon, I felt I was crossing a threshold. Walking through a magic fire. As I paid my admission and walked into the theater, I was crossing the Rubicon. Inside I was met by an overwhelming feeling of acceptance. Of delight. Of peace. Of self-love. These were feelings I had not felt in years. The theater was almost empty – a few patrons, a few dancers, and yet I felt I had entered a garden of Eden. A place of peace and new beginning.

I had a private dance, and felt a kind of life force re-entering my body in a way I had not felt years, and did not know was possible. I felt life, joy, power, masculinity, wonder, compassion, happiness, confidence. I felt a wave of primordial energy had entered my body and filled me up with power, with light, with love. Indeed the experience I had was an experience of love – love for myself, love for the dancer, and love of the universe pulsing through me. Transpersonal love.

I told my wife of the experience and she immediately demanded a divorce.

The experience was destructive of the marriage we had made, but it was also one of recreation – an experience of rejuvenation, of truth, of love, of mystery, for me. It broke apart old patterns that had become dead, and shot up new life in the direction of the primordial sun.

The experience demanded self love from me. I had to accept myself despite the “wrongness” in the context of my marriage. I had to love what was real for me. I had to be courageous. I had to walk into the unknown. I didn’t know what it was even like inside a strip club, besides distorted movies and cultural hyperbole. I certainly didn’t know what it would do to my marriage, but I sensed it would be profoundly disruptive. I had to apply courage to my desire in order to act on it, and indeed it caused much destruction and existential loss: My home, my life, my family, my identity as a husband, as a “good man”. The experience also took me into a realm of the mysterious – of piety. Because I was following my desire, I was following the tip of the spear of the great mysterious’ message for me. What was beyond this desire? What was behind it? What was this coming from? I had to abide in the mystery, and go to the place I was called to go. Sitting in that strip club theater for the first time, I was awash with the mystery. I was abiding in a primordial space I had never been, I had never known about. A place without shame. A place of acceptance of desire. Desire was not only accepted there, it was needed. It was functionally required. I brought Arete to my part – I researched the cost, the tipping, I was respectful, clear with the dancer. I feel I brought my best self to the experience – as unexpected as that might sound – I felt I was excellent there. And as I describe it here I bring poetry – to offer this experience back – acknowledging in and ratifying it as valuable, as holy.

In naming this virtue I put desire first because we must not shy away from desire in some puritanical fear. Desire is what drives us in our most simple, elemental level. Desire for warmth, desire for sex, desire for food, desire for light, desire for purpose, desire for expression. This desire is our motive force. To deny desire is to invert ourselves, to create a shadow out of our most primary, elemental drive. It will express itself eventually. Whether we like it or not. And we may not recognize it when it comes. And it will most certainly be destructive.

Campbell in his last interviews spoke most decisively about Bliss. He thought bliss was the best way to describe the best advice he could think of for people seeking a path of meaning. Follow your bliss, he said. Seek out those things that give you joy, that light you up, that make tasks beautiful, exciting, that give you the energy to go on when most people would give up, when others say, why are you still working on that? These areas are our bliss. They are not the easiest, they are not always pleasant per se, but they give us life. They give us primordial life.

Bill Moyers, the interviewer, asked if Bliss wasn’t selfish. What about helping other people? What about service?

Campbell said that what the world needs more than anything else is more people who are following their bliss. More people who are truly alive. By being truly alive, you are making Eden out of the wasteland. Do not create anymore wasteland. Follow your bliss.

In this sense bliss becomes a kind of beacon. An enlivening force that shines through you to others in a radiant way – the person who is in their bliss is an exemplar. Like the child who plays with such delight the adults are infected and want to join in their game. The adults are reminded of joy, of that pure delight and the rejuvenating power of this.

Bliss and joy and desire is are expression of self love and love of other in its generosity, and love of the world in its curiosity. It wants to play and interact with the world, to crawl around on it, to tumble like kittens wrestling. It is love in its depth but with childlike immediacy and lightness. It might be immature, but that is its strength. Because after the business of living, and business of seeing failure and fixing egos and status dynamics and competition, youthful rediscover is exactly what is needed. The adult, more than anyone, needs the rejuvenation of desire / joy / bliss.

Johnstone said, “People seem to think that children are immature adults. I prefer to think of adults as atrophied children.”

Desire / Joy / Bliss means begin again. You will always know if there is bliss present, joy present, desire present, or if it is absent. You may need to ask, what do I want? What do I want now?

The Warrior energy helps here – because the warrior can give us legs, can give us activity. I have a mantra for myself that has helped me: Activate desire.

When I don’t know what to do, when I feel stuck, I activate my desire. This involves action, it involves risk, it involves the unknown, it will take me to places that my be dangerous, that may be surprising, that may challenge me, that may challenge others. Activate desire means – go with your bliss, go with your joy, go with your desire into the unknown and find out why you want it.

Desire is critical for the artist. It offers us direction on what task to take up. What project to begin. What is interesting to me? What do I want out of this now? What makes me alive here? Where is life for me now? Desire pulls us towards our place, our genuine place, our genuine growth.

With Joy we are free. With or own desire there is new life. New beginning. With bliss there is purpose in the moment, visceral, experiential.

This energy is needed and required and leavening and uplifting as it touches all the other work we do as artists. All of our virtues and practices and projects benefit from joy, delight, wonder, desire. Lust even – dare I say lust – the carnal, corporeal, embodied desire – the movement towards something alive – the living response to living – lust as strength, lust as carnal love, lust as honesty, lust as primordial energy.

The fact that culture and commercial work uses sex and desire in infinite forms to trigger and motivate our actions does make discernment difficult. Key for me is the integration of Virtue 1: Love of self – in order to be operating from a sea of love, rather than desert of need. When faced with desire I find it helpful to apply love of self, to offer myself acceptance and love. This helps me to quiet some of the trigger motivation from external sources.

Another ally is virtue 7: Piety. Calling on this helps us to see beyond the simulacra, beyond the billboards and ads. Piety helps us see what is beyond them and sense if this is truly where bliss lies.

As artists we must embrace our bliss, our lust, embrace our desire, embrace our joy – consciously. To send them into the shadow is to make monsters out of them and to rob ourselves of our power to begin again, to be exuberant, to celebrate, to express with love and energy. To live. As artists we need that power, we need to celebrate, we need to be able to begin again.

DIRECT

Solo

Activate Desire

Stand, and become centered. Attend your body, attend your feelings. Allow a desire to form. Take steps toward it. Just steps. You don’t have to fulfill it – just take steps toward it.
Integration: What happens to the desire as you take steps toward it? Is there shame? Is there guilt for the desire? How might this apply to your art?

Bliss Station

Take some time and make a place for yourself that is a bliss station – a place where you can tune in to your own bliss, your own joy. It is free of distractions from others needs or duties. It is your bliss station.
Integration: What is required for you? How isolated, how integrated with others for you? Is it quiet, is it loud? Is it dark, is it light?

Pairs

I want to…Awesome

A and B. A says, “I want to… X”. B says: Awesome. And they go off towards it. Let the desire be small and available in the room.
Alternate.
Integration: A: How is it to name your desire before another? How is it to have your desire ratified? How is it to have a partner in fulfilling your desire?
B: How is it to ratify another’s desire? How is it to help them fulfill it?

Group

Let’s…

One person beings by saying “Let’s.. Dance” for example. Those in the group who would like to dance, genuinely, do so. Those that don’t wish to, leave the group and start another group. One person in the new group makes. An offer, and so on.
Note: It’s important that the person who offers an idea is offering a genuine desire, not a performative one for approval.
Integration: How is it to name a genuine desire in front of a group knowing that some may leave? How is it to listen to another’s desire named? We’re you able to feel whether you were joining in the activity just to join vs genuinely being inspired to participate?

CURTAIN

Without desire, without joy, we become slaves. We become automatons – robots. We have tasks, we may even have purpose – but without joy, our life becomes dour, our love shrinks, our beauty turns to hardness. If there is no joy, do not persist. You must change something, something must give way so that joy can re-emerge. This is your responsibility, otherwise you become again enslaved.

I apply this to my work as an artist, director, teacher, every day. My own temptation is to go to seriousness, because I feel this work is important, I feel art is important. I feel a director must come from a place of authority, etc. This virtue challenges me to remember that with only seriousness life is squeezed too tight. The love I wish to transmit can be blocked. The joy I wish to experience in this dance with god can be cut off, the record needle lifted. Joy / Bliss / Desire gives me authentic energy to work, to create, to relate to artists, to relate to those I am working with in the spirit of curiosity, play, interest. It helps me return to the task after months, after years of thought and analysis. Return with fresh eyes. Return with beginner’s mind. This virtue reminds me that life emerges again from the vacuum – that my desire can lead me to what is needed of me now – not concepts or simulacra from the past or my own frameworks – what must I do now? What feels right?

Desire, Joy, Bliss, is the way to begin again. To find the beginners mind, to find innocence. Innocence is not the freedom of desire, innocence is the freedom from guilt, and shame. Innocence is the acceptance of desire, and the activation of it. Like a child running from room to room, seeking their bliss, seeking their delight, seeking the new beginning. We can be like children again. We can return to innocence.