Introduction
The Q’uo principle addresses the Other Selves Working Group at their 2024 gathering on the complicated subject of desire and how it is refined in the midst of spiritual seeking. As both a force shaping us and being shaped by our continually discovered biases, we learn to work with the great variety of desires, both in how they relate to each other and how they might be expressed and integrated. Because these desires tend to dip below consciousness, Q’uo reminds us of the veil’s purpose in stimulating polarization in third density, forming the basis for a kind of organization of desires that allow us to pursue our chosen pole. Even frustrated desire can be very instructive to a mind/body/spirit complex’s larger evolution, especially when it comes to reconciling our polarized choice with the constellation of desires the seeker continually discovers within its complex.
Group question
Today, Q’uo, we would like to hear your thoughts on the purification of desire.
Channelled message
(Steve channeling)
I am Q’uo. We greet you in the love and in the light of the One Infinite Creator. It is our great privilege and pleasure to be with you today, that we might share our thoughts with you and, perhaps more importantly, our being with you.
As you have gathered together to seek, it is easy to say that the object of your seeking is the One Infinite Creator. And there is great truth in that proclamation. But we ask: do we know what that means? Do we know what it means to seek the Infinite, the One, the All? Do we know what it means, in fact, to seek at all?
We do have some thoughts we would be happy to share with those here gathered. We would ask, however, that you understand that our thoughts are merely thoughts that we ourselves have and most happily share with you. But we are not authorities; we are fellow seekers, and as seekers, we too are perpetually beset by the question, what is it truly that we do seek? Is seeking something that can find final resolution, even to the point of being able to say, “ah, at last, yes, I see: it is that that I seek.” Now it may be that we have had a little more experience upon the path of seeking, and it may be that that experience might give to us some perspective that could be useful to you. But we assure you that it is our experience that seeking is in each case so unique that it is a great danger to generalize from one form of seeking to another on the assumption that they will be the same.
Now, if we can rely on your resolve to exercise your own discernment, we will plunge into this question you have asked concerning the nature of desire and the fundamental elements associated with its purification, in the belief that you are aware that we may only speak from out of our own process and are most prepared to defer to that process which you find your own, which may well differ in significant ways from what we have found to be workable and true in our own endeavor which, as we understand it, never, ever comes to an end. For is it not true, my friends, that the Creator itself seeks? And should we be so fortunate as to find ourselves not just cleaving to the Creator, not just unifying to the Creator, but fully immersed in the Creator to be a co-Creator that still we would seek? And is this seeking not central to the issue of desire itself?
I desire, I am born of desire, in desire, to desire, and so my being is surrounded on all sides by the prospect of desire given, desire available in prospect. To desire is to be, as to be is to desire. Now that being the case, how could desire possibly go wrong? For if it is so closely associated with my very beingness, how could there be room for asking why there would need to be a change, a transformation, or, as you have asked, a purification of desire?
Well, we would suggest that this is the great conundrum that describes the position that may be called “original” for your peoples. The original position of one who has entered into third density is such that desire is never, ever, completely a given, although it is always, always already given. A paradox indeed! One is born into desire: as an infant one desires to escape from discomfort. One desires that which one encounters as food, as comfort, as succor. And yet there is always, even in infancy, the freedom of maneuver within desire, so that one may take up a relation to that desire. O split personality! For the self that emerges as the one capable of taking up this relation to desire is one that cannot be defined by the desire it seeks to take up a relation to.
We have used the word, “seeking,” and is the word, “seeking,” not a term of desire? And so, yes, I am able to take up a relationship to the desire that I have, or find myself to have, or discover within myself by virtue of a capacity which I always already have of achieving a different focus of desire from that which is already given. It is as if desire itself has been split, has bifurcated, so that it is what we may call a reflexive process. There is a reflection of desire still in desire, for we have not yet brought in any extraneous factor such as wisdom might be; and we are working entirely within the framework of desire and have discovered that desire may not desire to be what has been found to be desired or has been found to be desire in its first found form.
And so, now we have the question of the desirability of desire, and we find that within that question there is the possibility of a proliferation of many, many desires. And indeed, by the time one is able to formulate such observations, desires have proliferated almost beyond number. My life is full to brimming with desires–almost every glance at the creation about me affords a new opportunity for my ever-ready eye to fasten upon a new object of desire, a new object that may be desired. And even those objects that I find that I do not desire are accepted within a framework that is, again, that of desire, for the undesirable is undesirable in relation to a potential array of desires. It is something that doesn’t fit what I please myself to understand are my desires.
And so I am making discriminations from a very early age, and these discriminations all resonate within the framework defined by desires of many, many manifest forms. And as I begin to mature, I am more and more capable of interacting with my environment and with others within my environment in such a way that I am able to assemble desires, as one might say, into groupings and find what you call value in those groupings that I have learned best befit the self I am learning to be. As this process of maturation begins to gain steam, so to speak, begins to gather itself into a momentum, we might say, or as I begin to become more informed with regard to how these arrays or groupings of desire actually do function in the economy of my being, I am able to form estimates or values, if you will, that suggest that there is work to be done by means of furthering the refinements within these groupings so that I may achieve more and better focus within my own desire.
Now, this is not quick work, my friends. It is indeed slow work, and it is almost inevitably undertaken with many stops and starts, with many false leads and dead ends, so that I wind up having to backtrack and recover lost threads and find that paths I have pursued are in fact mistaken in one way or another. And these can often lead to experiences of blockage, where my desires are tangled in a knot to the point that I cannot find my way to a clear expression of them. I feel inhibited; I feel lost; I cannot even so much as summon the strength of a desire that would have the potential to break through the circumstance I have found myself in. I am, in short, depressed.
Now, this is an experience which is also virtually inevitable within third density which has the unique quality or characteristic of the veil. And in the veil one does not fully know what that object of one’s desire truly is or even what the origin of the desire within one’s deeper self is. And so, confusion, my friends, is the order of the day. And this confusion can be deep and defining of an entire personality configuration, but it is never received as a final or adequate expression of the self. And therefore, a good portion of the desires that one learns to embrace have almost inevitably the character of being directed towards the escape from various entanglements or confusions.
And we will further complicate the matter by saying that no personality is completely simple. And what that means is that there are many, many pockets of such confusion that one has learned to, more or less, conceal within the corners of one’s being so that, as one proceeds, there are these pockets of energy, if you will, and what is desire but creative energy, which are locked away, secured in a forbidden zone of the psyche. And yet, we tell you, my friends, that no energy is ever willing to remain concealed; it always seeks manifestation, but it will do so in these obscure highways and byways of the unconscious mind, forming there what you may call motivations. But these motivations are many and diverse, and they do not always cue to the same tune, so to speak; they do not always focus on the same value.
And so we would say then, as the initial formulation of our response to the dynamic of the purification of desire, that the first stage in this process is that which begins by allowing all of these many and diverse sources of motivation within the deeper portions of the psyche to have their expression to find their way to the surface, no matter how unwelcome they might be received by other dimensions of the personality. For the motivations that go to make up the primordial reaches of desire cannot be brought into alignment unless they are first given space to reveal themselves, unless they can be felt, unless they can be embraced, unless they can be loved and accepted as a portion of the personality, even if they do not appear to be anything but very ugly.
And so the process of purification, we would suggest, always begins with a reach into the depths where the unpretty elements of the personality have been forced to reside. That, my friends, is a difficult, difficult undertaking, for what is more difficult to love than that which within the self has already been declared to be unlovable?
With this, we would at this time transfer the contact to the one known as Jeremy. I am Q’uo.
(Jeremy channeling)
I am Q’uo, and I am with this instrument at this time.
We have discussed how the reflections of the self in dynamic tension issue from a deep portion of energetic upswelling which we have called both desire and the creative impulse. This offers to the seeker who resolves to pay homage to the wholeness of the self a great duty, for it is true, as we have intimated through the instrument known as Steve, that where these cracks in the rigid structure of selfhood that one has conscious access to find themselves, there emerge the bubbling up of stray and unowned impulses of creativity–those that speak to the self one imagines oneself to be, and those which speak to an alternative self that has not yet blossomed into the full acceptance that completes the circuit of desire.
For it is not the case that the object one imagines the desire to pour into always constitutes the best reflection of this upswelling we have spoken of. And in this searching of the self, the tracing of the finger along the cracks, one discovers the very contrived sense in which one has constituted one’s selfhood. It was a creative act to repress those desires deemed ugly; it was not simply an act of creativity, but instead also a refuge from a reflection one wishes not to consider at a given time.
What we are building to in this survey of a self’s multiple streams of desire is a task of arrangement, of a kind of organization, such that each current has smooth flow, but it will not present in a manner that advertises clearly this flow by the destination to which it flows, the object of desire. It must be understood that the attractive elements of creation that pull on one’s desire are not themselves the main point of evolution, but the dynamic flow of energy itself. And this is the key point in approaching reconciliation in wholeness of self: to understand that desire–in both its embraced and repressed characters–offers a moving picture of what one is reaching towards and cannot simply be collapsed easily and simply into a shallow judgment of what one ought to strive for or ought not to strive for.
There will always be waypoints on the path back to the Creator, and waypoints must be appreciated as guideposts, not as terminuses. This is part of the way that one begins to recover stray, repressed, unappreciated desires: by recognizing that the proximate target towards which they pull the self is not the endpoint, and therefore there is a scope of vision available to one’s reflection on the self that ties up all the loose ends, and one must work with the self to widen this scope of vision such that everything can be seen to have its place. This, my friends, is what we of Q’uo mean by a kind of organization of self.
Now, we do not mean this as a transitive activity that one performs upon the self. Here we run up again against the indeterminate agency of the evolving co-Creator, for one cannot simply will the self into alignment. This is more of an act of, in some cases, waiting patiently for the tectonic plates underneath to shift and expose what has been buried and obscured from conscious and even certain levels of unconscious attention. This is the great role of faith in rearranging desire within oneself by keeping connected to one’s light within so that, as the scenery shifts about one, one never forgets which act of the play one is in and therefore can take the cues from the other players as to where one should await opportunity.
The judicious and prudent use of opportunity is a vitally pregnant topic which we may discuss with you at a future date, for it calls upon the use of time to allow the Creator to work upon the self and thereby find appropriate outlets for each egress of creative sparking current, such that each has its flow and a total self can find definition thereby. So we would suggest that in this searching, forgiving, recognizing of buried and unloved parts of the self, one is doing work that has no immediate actionable fruition. And this can be the source of great despair if one feels one is, for example, on a timetable of evolution. This is a deep worry underneath the conscious minds of many at this late stage in third density, for there is a ticking clock, and yet it will not bring the self into alignment on one’s own terms–not until one has touched into those things, those pieces of self that have been stowed away.
We reiterate the necessity to, at times, focus on being a “filtered self,” so that one can learn the mechanics of will and agency, so to speak. But this is a game of kicking the can down the road, as your people say. And this asymmetry of the project of being a self is one that must frustrate any seeker until they have learned a kind of patience, a kind of abiding in incompleteness and a faith in a wholeness that cannot be, in truth, fully accepted at the moment. Once one has begun to give evolution and the upward spiraling light its space to operate knowing that one will not dissolve in the meantime or become corrupted by the baggage one has kicked under the bed, then the self–newly realized in this subtle manner–may begin to work with these forces of evolution and recognize the tandem project of purification, one in which one plays some role but also takes responsibility for awaiting the being acted upon.
To further explicate the dynamics of this purifying process we would transfer contact to the instrument known as Nithin. We are those of Q’uo.
(Nithin channeling)
We are Q’uo, and we are with this instrument.
It can be useful to consider the purification of desire under the lens of a type of catalyst. It may bother one that the intentionality and the flow of a given desire cannot be immediately actualized, but the exploration of this difficulty is part and parcel with service towards the One Infinite Creator.
When one senses the lack of flow surrounding a desire it may be useful to also ask oneself if there are patterns behind this resistance and reluctance that expand beyond the particular desire in question, and then, if having found other areas of similar patterns of resistance, having recognized the experience upon the mind of such catalyst, engaging with the progressive archetypes of the archetypical mind, asking oneself, perhaps, what other conflicting distortions or desires are present that may, or could, conceivably present an opposition to the desire that one is attempting to purify and crystallize. This purification and crystallization of desire is also an act of self-discovery, and as the exploration of what is, is also paradoxically the exploration of what is not through the mechanism of the veil.
One often has to seemingly struggle with truly understanding all of the individual desires, loves, preferences, annoyances, concerns, fears that may play a role in one particularly consciously held desire that one wishes to explore. The conscious desire which one contemplates is like a floating glacier, as the example goes, and there is often much underneath the surface in the unconscious mind waiting to be revealed. And so a practice–an inquiry involving prayer, meditation, and contemplation–can be useful in both understanding what currently exists in the root of the mind and between the root of the mind and the conscious surface of the mind that may be affecting the actualization of a given desire.
Although we have a tendency in third density to focus on the most, shall we say, efficacious or efficient process of self-discovery, there is indeed value in, even as a positive entity, being exposed to both the bright light of the sun and, occasionally, be grasping in the pale light of the moon. And so, when one is dealing with difficulty in setting an intention and having the full force of one’s being flow into that particular desire, it is not just necessarily a lack of discipline that results in such a difficulty, but also in fact an area that may be further explored. And time spent in such exploration can be fruitful in not just actualizing that desire but to also more generally undistort and crystallize the self in the chosen path of service. And may we also suggest that, in exploring desire, to also view other selves and one’s understanding of other selves’ desires and intentions as a skill set that can be also used toward the self in understanding what one truly desires, and even having recognized a so-called true desire, if there are any undiscovered or aspects of the self that perhaps have yet to be brought to the full light of the sun that may be in resistance to that desire.
And while at least one of the practices of meditation, contemplation, and prayer is essential for service and the discovery of self and the exploration of desire, utilizing all three is a more, shall we say, efficacious way in sometimes resolving a particular conundrum of desire, for none of us are ever alone, and each of the three practices sometimes draws upon different aspects of the greater self more effectively for self-discovery and transformation.
And with these thoughts, we now leave this instrument and go to the one known as Steve. We are Q’uo.
(Steve channeling)
I am Q’uo, and I am again with this instrument.
And so, my friends, we will attempt to put a finer point upon our response to this interesting and important query by suggesting that, in the first and final place, the significant self is both a Creator and a creature of desire. And as such, it is a being in motion, so to speak, and a being in motion has one fundamental responsibility, and that is to address not just the whence, but the whither of that motion. Where shall I go? Where shall I be directed? And only when that question has been posed can the self begin to take up that relationship to itself which suggests the possibility of improvement or, as you say, of purification. What is decisive in this issue is the question of how the seeking should proceed based on who the self wants to become, and there is a decision required; there is a choice that must be made, and this choice becomes the anvil upon which the hammer of catalyst must fall again and again and again.
Shall I be the self that, finding myself among other selves, wishes to allow the dissolution of the self in that beingness which may emerge amongst us all? Do I, in short, seek to serve other selves as, what I increasingly come to understand, the highest reaches of that desire which defines the self I wish to be? Or do I desire, gazing upon other selves, to surmount the mass, to reach out the hand of control and gather to myself the powers and principalities of this world as I find them expressed in these other selves that to me are but my dominion? Shall I seek to control these other selves? Shall I seek power not in the loss of self but in the aggrandizement of self? Shall I serve only myself?
Both choices–and there are but two in the ultimate analysis–both choices yield a set of values according to which individual desires may be regulated, may be analyzed, may be assessed with regard to their utility in promoting the value of the whole. This process of self-analysis is essential work regardless of the path one has chosen, and it will involve what you may call purification of the primary elements of selfhood, which we would suggest to you are experienced to you in the form of those emotions which perpetually arise within you. And so the purification process is one not simply of taking the whole and purifying it all at once, but rather to purify the elements first of all by disentangling them from one another. And one deals then with the issue of purified emotion.
So if it is grief, let it be grief unalloyed. Let it not be grief experienced with an admixture of guilt or a sense of something left undone; let it be loss, purely accepted as loss. If it is hope, let it be hope purely given and purely accepted; let it not be hope admixed with fear. If it is gratitude, or if it is love ,let it be love, or let it be gratitude. If it be anger, if it be hate, if it be an upsurge of the need for self-assertion, we too would say: “let it be these things if those truly are not just what you find within yourself, but what you find yourself to have chosen.”
For as one advances in the process of the purification of the self and its desire one faces more and more centrally that question of fundamental value: what is it that I do choose? What will be the criterion according to which my aspiration to purification will play out? That, my friends, is the thought with which we must leave you; that is the key, and it is not necessarily the case that the choice once made remains clear and uncomplicated, for you like we are not simple beings, although simplification at the level of choice is the narrow gate through which you must pass to pass on to the next phase of your evolution that yet calls to you.
We are those Q’uo, and at this time we would ask if there are any brief questions you may have that would help further clarify any issue that remains on your mind. We are Q’uo.
Jeremy: Q’uo, I wonder if you could put a fine point on something that I get a hint of in your words. There seems to me to be a connection between desire purified and the basic expenditures of energy typified by the archetypal mind. Am I mistaken in seeing a congruence here, and is there any focus you could put on it that might help me see this connection better?
I am Q’uo, and we believe we do understand your query, my friend.
It is indeed true that an understanding of those stages on the way of mind, as we might call them, known as the archetypes are useful lenses through which one may view the sundry desires that arise within the course of evolving a significant self. This is a large question and could not be adequately answered without bringing into play those archetypes themselves.
However, we will say that the work that precedes all other work is indeed that work of the choice, which you may find listed among the archetypes. It is not, however, necessary to be master of the archetypes to be aware of the centrality of the choice and indeed to be deeply involved into the choosing of it. And so while we will say that an awareness of the archetypes is always a useful tool in sorting out the strands of energistic, interrelated elements of desire, that the lack of awareness of the archetypes would not prevent the central reality from becoming realized, and that is the reality of the choice. For one finds in quite a visceral way the need for that choice perpetually to arise, and we can assure you that many, many a harvested individual has been so without having consciously employed the archetypes to specific advantage.
It does constitute an interesting area of exploration well worth the asking at a future working, my friend. Is that a satisfactory answer for the nonce?
Jeremy: Yes, thank you, Q’uo.
Q’uo: Are there further queries at this time?
Baris: I have a question, maybe just to clarify my own thinking. My summary of my understanding of what you were saying is that to be able to crystallize a desire one needs to first allow all the other desires that are perhaps in the dark to come to surface, and then ask oneself the polarity of these desires. Did I get that right?
I am Q’uo, and we do think that we understand your query, my friend.
You are correct in observing that polarity is the central issue in organizing the array of desires that you seek to purify. The choice of polarity, however, is not itself immediately given but rather must be discovered and created within the internal dynamics of the body of desire. Thus, the chosen polarity will both be a subject of the creation of the significant self and an object of its self-discovery. One cannot meaningfully evaluate individual desires in relation to a polarity one has not yet deeply chosen, and so the working with the desire is itself a central portion of the project of achieving the state that can be called “choice.”
Does that adequately address your query, my friend?
Baris: Yes, thank you. I’ll think more about it.
We are those of Q’uo. Is there one final query at this time?
(No response)
Finding that we seem to have exhausted the energies of this group, we would at this time take our leave, thanking each here for the dedication and self-sacrifice which is taken to appear in this circle of seeking at this time. We are honored that you have called us to your circle, and we are humbled to be able to serve in that small way that we hope we have done.
We are those of Q’uo. Adonai, my friends. Adonai.