What Does Your Heart Ask For?

Last week was a special anniversary for me.  It marked seven years since the man who is now my husband swept into my life and asked me to marry him at our first meeting.  I had just turned 49 and had never been married.  But I had always wanted a partner.  There were many years when I closed down that part of myself that yearned to be married.  But I had recently begun to get back in touch with what was indeed my heart’s desire.  The fact that my husband materialized still feels like a miracle to me.  (A wonderful beginning to the month of Kislev, the month of miracles!)

Spiritual traditions often have complicated relationships to desire.  Some see desire as the source of suffering, others as the source of sin.  And it is true:  our desires are so easily magnified and so often impossible to satisfy.   Desire opens us to greed, selfishness and violence.  Judaism usually places desire in the realm of the yetzer hara, the “evil inclination,” the part of ourselves that is based in the ego and that causes a lot of difficulties for ourselves and for others.

And yet, there is another kind of desire.  One way we speak about it is mish’alot libeinu, that which our heart asks for.  This phrase appears in a few places, most notably in the blessing of the new month, which asks that we be granted lives in which our heart’s desire be fulfilled for the good.  A similar request is made in an Aramaic passage from the Zohar recited just before the Torah is taken from the ark. 

Why do we ask for our heart’s desire if wanting is such a dangerous thing that leads to sin and suffering?  It turns out that desire, like the yetzer hara itself, is not so easily categorized.  In a surprising, but telling comment, the Midrash teaches that when God said, “It is very good,” at the conclusion of creation, God was actually referring to the yetzer hara.   The ego is an essential aspect of living in this world and so is desire.

In the work I do one-on-one with people, I find there is something enormously healing about identifying our heart’s desire.  Sometimes just considering the question of what we most want for ourselves is enough to bring tears to the eyes.  In my experience, by connecting in to these deep desires, we are actually tapping in to the flowering of the life force itself manifesting in us. In opening to what our heart is asking for, we can hear the full expression of our unique and precious soul.

Now, there are so many reasons we might shut down parts of ourselves and shutting down can be the wisest course of action, particularly when we are not feeling well resourced.  And I am not a proponent of the idea that if you “put out your intention into the universe,” it will automatically oblige and fulfill your wish.  I have no idea why I found love when I did.  But there can be something sacred about allowing ourselves to desire.  It might even move us towards the fulfillment of those desires for the good.