Reviving Old Desires
“Now the New Year reviving old Desires,
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires”
Writing on the cusp of the looming new year, I found myself remembering these lines from the 19th century translation of the medieval Persian poem: the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, by Edward Fitzgerald. Its theme seems to point to both a renewal, but also suggestive of a regression.
Thinking on it I found this commentary, which is enlightening:
“This verse is a recognition of the turning of the wheel of life and what we choose to do with each renewal.
He starts off with, “Now the New Year reviving old Desires.” Why does the New Year revive old desires? The new year is a rebirth of the seasons, signaling a new cycle in our lives. If we don’t apply conscious willpower, however, we instinctively follow the patterns we set in the previous year. So, with the new year, we are reborn, but so too are our old habits and old desires.
But “The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires.” We always have a choice: We can give in to those old, often limiting patterns, getting caught up in the frantic activity and mental ruts of satisfying those old desires; or we can choose to let go of those compulsions and impulses and, instead, turn inward in contemplation, in meditation, in prayer. We can step out of the hustle and bustle of the hungry mind and retire to peaceful solitude.
Solitude, here, is not necessarily isolation or separation from others. For the mystic, true solitude is oneness, unity, wholeness — whether or not other people are around. In this solitude, we encounter the living presence of the Divine, which Omar Khayyam evokes with the sacred figures of Moses and Jesus.” (1)
It has been several long and not easy months since my returning from Kerala at the end of September, and my last post was written in the Pandhal café at David Hall, Fort Kochi, where I regularly went for morning coffee and writing (2).
Since then it has once again been a saga of home hunting and setting up, with the Christmas and New Year period following hard on the heels of this.
Here I seem set to be for awhile anyway, back in the one time coal mining regions of Country Durham, but as ever my thoughts revolve around my spiritual journey like a planet the sun. Returning anywhere rather inevitably returns you to the erstwhile lives lived in them, even though you feel you have (or should have) moved on. In my case this translates into academic research projects, more especially the follow up to the one I concluded when I left my life behind and travelled first to India to start the Pilgrimage in November 2019. Following my first return to the UK in 2022, (see Works Still to Do ) I then worked towards getting the original project report, barely finished before my departure, into a book proposal which finally resulted in its formal publication back in August (3). Now what?
Going back to India at the end of March and all that followed from that, concluding with the month of May in the mountains, spelled out with stark clarity that the ritual phases of the Pilgrimage cycles were over and a return of some description was therefore inevitable (The Song is Over). What that might translate into was however less clear. Habit of mind underpinned by an overall cluelessness decided me on pursuing the follow up work that the original project had envisaged and so, upon arrival into Kochi, I worked towards this. Rather inevitably it was a struggle trying to regain those old ways of working, research, reading, drafting out potential proposals. These depended on intellectual and cognitive skills some since repurposed to support my higher spiritual journey. Deep down I know I lacked conviction too, but couldn’t see my way to anything else, reading the cues as I did then.
Now I’m inclined to see it as a necessary container for bringing me out of the mountains, and back into the world. As discussed in earlier posts, I had become too caught up in the dynamics and lure of the Pilgrimage and those sublime and magical experiences that were such a part of them, and was constantly being drawn back, as the pull of a wave draws you back into the sea.
Those weeks in Kochi also found me able to recover the presumed lost art as I started – finally – painting again, working on a new series (Malabar) in a totally new style (4). And assembling the already significant material written across the Pilgrimage years into a book of the same. In some ways it feels as though I had to recover the energies of the pre Pilgrimage years and repurpose them into a whole new vision. For, as Jesus tells us:
“No-one puts new wine into old wineskins” (5)
Sacrifices of good things still with life in them do sometimes have to be made for a new stage to be properly born. When you sow a new crop, you don’t want seeds from the old one regenerating, producing more of the same. Hence the need for fallow periods, vigilance and work.
As the full year of this new experimental website approaches it has changed from being ‘Forever Sadhu’ into my new non de plume ‘Turbulent Priest’, drawing upon those turbulent dynamic creative energies that have ever been such important drivers in my psyche.
Or, as with an earlier post here, that phoenix rising from the ashes!
Featured Image of crocuses: https://images.app.goo.gl/QDirACcGXr8Dq4aH7
1. Commentary by Ivan M Granger
3. Elizabeth Currie and John Schofield. 2024. Indigenous Concepts of Health and Healing in Andean Populations. Understanding the Relevance of Traditional Medicine in a Changing World. Routledge. Taylor Francis.
