This full moon is a ripe opportunity to illuminate our relationship with desire. Scorpio’s key phrase is “I desire…” This archetype holds the intensity of our longings, emotional drives for sensation, privacy, power and transformation. Taurus’s key phrase “I have” is associated with our desire for material security, pleasure, comfort and control.
The power of understanding desire is reflected in the $44,000,000,000 plus dollars a year spent on market research globally. Much of this is focused on understanding what we desire (even deep in our subconscious) because desire is what motivates us to take action and to spend our resources.
My first lessons in this came as I ventured out into the world. Motivated by a deep desire for freedom and exploration, I graduated early from high school in order to peel out of my driveway the month I turned 18. I turned my wheel towards the symbol of adventure and independence that is the American West.
Looking for jobs in Denver, research opportunities would pop up now and then, offering a good return for a few days of work facilitating surveys. It was eye opening to see that figuring out how to sell people what a company has to offer has little to do with the product itself. It has much more to do with tapping into what people desire deep down and somehow linking that to the brand.
Not only did this turn me into a more aware consumer, the power of desire stuck with me and sunk in overtime as I become more invested in my own healing journey.
Realizing how the powerful associations in the messages of advertisers had obscured my relationship to what it is that I desired, helped me to see how what I was consuming in the media reinforced a material focus.
As I came to appreciate how key self-awareness is to personal empowerment, I came to better understand how desire lies is at the heart of transformation. I was able to begin to reorient from a desire "to have" framework to a desire "to be" based in deeper values and states of being.
Being aware (at least as aware as advertisers are;) that what we truly desire to have are not things, but states like well-being, connection, love, self-worth, appreciation, security, pleasure wonder and ______, is a key to empowerment.
What most of us truly desire are feeling states, experiences, quality connection with ourselves and others. Over time I began to see just how much reaching for what the marketplace offered was an action taken based on a desire for something that having or consuming that thing would not satisfy.
It’s genius really, how advertising campaigns take us to the edge of envy or jealousy without going all the way. They masterfully veer us toward their product with our yearning fully aroused. The connection is implied in a way that the brain takes the leap, If I buy this, have this, I don’t need to be jealous because I can buy this and have “it” (the connection, happiness).
Unpacking this can help us to flip our relationship with our own understanding of what is behind our choices. Orienting toward states of being is game changing and helps make choices that are more likely to meaningfully and sustainably realize these states of being, which is the approach to empowerment and transformation I find the most powerful.
When we come into a deeper understanding of what it is that we desire we can expand the realm of possibility with respect to what choices we can make; what can we bring into our lives; what might we need to weed out of our life to help us feel and experience more of the states of being that we long to realize and sustain.
Take some time on the high energy of this full moon to gain perspective on what states of being you most desire to experience.
You may choose to create space to be alone, find a spot outside, get quiet within yourself and free write anything this brings up for you.
Or/And, you might be in the flow of a busy weekend doing what you normally do and just taking moments here and there to observe your state of mind, energy and emotions.
What are the qualities of experience the places and spaces you are in give rise to within you?
Do you find yourself reaching for something to enhance or numb anything you are experiencing?
Does this activity reflect and support your most desired states of being?