Body desires are real. Painbody ‘desires’ are not. But only recently have I been able to grasp what the tangible, embodied desire is when a painbody is active.  For instance, if my ‘doer’ (based in unworthiness) is active, and I’m ‘achieving’ a lot in a day out of effort, I can see that all that doing isn’t what my body actually wants. I get depleted, frustrated, things get glitchy—all signs I’m out of what is true/delicious/real.

At this point in my healing, I’m usually able to stop the madness of the painbody’s wants; I stop, bring awareness to the situation.. just be. I wait for something effortless to emerge. It breaks the pattern of the painbody and leaves room for something real. But where is my desire in this process? I don’t often know..

If delicious yes/desire is the default movement of all things under God—if it’s always operating, in some capacity—then there must be a desire present, even when a painbody is active. But this has felt elusive to me, finding what my body wants in those moments of being triggered, of painbody being active.

What I realized is what the body wants in those moments of active painbody is physical touch, physical attention. The body itself wants to be held in loving arms. The painbody is the wounded kid who believes he’s unworthy or unloveable, and is looking for worth or loveabilty in success or approval—something disembodied and abstract. But what his body wants in that moment is to be physically seen, to be felt/touched.