The Desire Level of Consciousness

What is the Desire level of consciousness?

Desire, the fourth rung of Twelv's levels of consciousness, runs on a promise that is always about to be kept: once I have it, everything will be all right. The "it" keeps changing. A salary, a partner, a body, a house, a following, a feeling. What stays the same is the shape of the promise, and the fact that it is never quite kept.

You know the scene. The parcel arrives, and for an hour it is wonderful. The promotion comes through, and by the next quarter you are studying the job above it. The holiday is booked, and the pleasure of booking it turns out to have been the best part. None of these wants is wrong. What marks the stance is that each one is carrying more weight than an object can carry: it is supposed to settle something in you, and objects do not settle people.

Desire is restless rather than heavy. It leans forward with real appetite, and that appetite is both its gift and its trap.

Why is Desire a step up from Fear?

Because it moves toward instead of away. Fear organises a life around what must not happen. Desire organises it around what might, and that change of direction releases a great deal of energy. The person who was hiding from rejection starts applying for things. The person who would not risk being seen starts wanting to be seen, badly. It is not peace, but it is motion with a destination. David R. Hawkins, in Power vs. Force, linked this stage with wanting and craving, a powerful motivator in his account that also keeps a person chasing.

It helps to see the logic of the whole lower ladder here. Apathy expects nothing. Grief holds on to what was. Fear guards what is. Desire reaches for what could be, which is why it feels better than the stances below it, and why it can feel like the answer. It is a real step. It is not yet a resting place.

What does the craving loop look like in daily life?

It looks like a life with a permanent sense of almost. The body feels it first, as a low itch: the hand that reaches for the phone before the mind has asked for anything, the refresh, the scroll, the basket filled at midnight and abandoned at one. Pleasure arrives as a spike and leaves as a dip, and the dip is what sends you looking again.

Decisions lean forward, and come fast. The next course, the next upgrade, the next city. Commitment is hard, not because of fear, as at the level below, but because commitment means the other options close, and the other options are where the glow lives. Getting is exciting. Having is oddly flat.

Relationships take on the same rhythm. The chase is intoxicating and the arrival is a puzzle. Partners and friends can become, without anyone intending it, a little like acquisitions: wanted intensely while uncertain, and quietly taken for granted once won. None of this makes a person unkind; there can be great warmth at this level. What is hard is the ordinary middle of things, where nothing new is being won.

You may recognise some of these:

• You can name the next thing that will make life good, and it is different from the thing you named last year.
• Anticipation regularly outshines arrival.
• Quiet evenings with nothing to look forward to feel faintly unbearable.
• You compare your life with other people's, and the comparison always runs uphill.
• Enough is a word you understand in principle and have never actually reached.

What is the difference between healthy wanting and Desire as a stance?

Healthy wanting is specific and it ends. You want the job, you get it, and you are glad. Desire as a stance is endless and interchangeable: the object changes, the hunger does not, and the promise of fine is always one acquisition away.

A useful test is what happens after the getting. Wanting as fuel delivers you somewhere and lets you enjoy it. Desire as a stance delivers you to the starting line of the next want. Another test is what the want is carrying. If you want a bicycle because you like riding, the bicycle can do that job. If you want it so that you will finally feel like the kind of person who has their life together, no bicycle can do that job, and the wanting will simply move on to the next candidate.

Nothing on this ladder asks you to stop wanting. Every level above this one still wants things, sometimes passionately. What changes as a person moves up is that the wanting stops being asked to fix them.

What does Desire look like at its worst?

Compulsion, envy, and the spiritual version of the same hunger. Compulsion is Desire with the pleasure removed: the reaching continues long after it has stopped being enjoyable, because stopping feels worse. It can attach to anything, from shopping to work to the phone in your hand. If a compulsion is harming your health, money or relationships, that is worth taking to a licensed professional.

Envy is Desire looking sideways. Every life is measured against someone else's highlights, and the gap becomes a permanent ache. The envious person may have plenty. They are short of enough, and enough is always located in someone else's house.

The subtlest shadow takes a spiritual turn. Awakening becomes the next acquisition: the retreat, the teacher, the practice that will finally make you the calm person you are supposed to be. The wanting has simply changed its object. When growth turns into one more thing to get, it is still Desire, and the tell is the same as it always was: the satisfaction never lasts, and the next thing is already glowing.

What promise does Desire make to each archetype?

The promise is tailored: Desire speaks to each archetype about the one thing it was built to want.

• The Innocent: "When everything finally settles, I will be happy." Each calm season reveals one more thing that has to be fixed first.
• The Everyman: "When I am truly one of them, I will relax." The invitation that should end the outsider feeling arrives, and the feeling stays.
• The Hero: "When I win this one, I will rest." The next victory is always the one that will finally count.
• The Caregiver: "When they thank me properly, it will all have been worth it." The craving is for gratitude, and none of it ever arrives in the right form.
• The Explorer: "When I get there, I will feel free." Each destination turns into a departure lounge for the next.
• The Rebel: "When the old order falls, I can breathe." One victory against a target is followed quickly by the need for another.
• The Lover: "When I find the one, I will be whole." Each beginning glows, and dims at the exact point where it becomes real.
• The Creator: "When this is finished and seen, I will believe I am good." The launch comes and goes, and the hunger moves to the next project.
• The Jester: "When the room is laughing, I am fine." The laugh lands, and the need for the next one starts before the first has faded.
• The Sage: "When I finally understand, I will be at peace." The craving is for certainty, and each answer opens two new questions.
• The Magician: "When I have the method, everything will change." Systems and practices are collected like keys to a door that keeps moving.
• The Ruler: "When everything is under control, I can enjoy it." The domain grows, and so does the list of things that could go wrong.

How does wanting find its spine?

The next rung is Anger, which sounds like an odd thing to aim for until you see what it adds: a spine. Desire asks. Anger declares. When a want is blocked, it can collapse back into Fear, or it can harden into a stand: this matters, and I will not accept less. That is the want finding its spine, and it is the move these practices prepare.

• Write down the last three things you were sure would make you fine once you had them. Next to each, note how long the fine lasted. Do not judge the list. Just read it.
• Delay one want by a week. Not to deny it, but to watch what the wanting does when it is not fed. It may fade. It may sharpen into something worth having.
• Notice the heat when a want is blocked: the queue that does not move, the offer withdrawn, the flat no. That heat is the beginning of Anger, and it knows something craving does not, which is what it refuses to accept.
• Ask what the want is for. Behind the new car may be a wish to be respected; behind the new partner, a wish to be chosen. Name the wish, and you may find you can act on it directly.
• Draw one finish line. Write down what enough would be in one area of life, such as money, work or recognition, and keep the page. Desire hates a finish line, which is why drawing one is useful.
• Turn one want into a stand. Instead of "I want them to listen to me", try "I will not keep explaining myself to people who will not listen." Wanting pleads. A stand decides.

How does Twelv place someone at Desire?

By reading where your answers put you, not where your wants do. Desire corresponds to the fourth band from the bottom, below the middle of the ladder: the weighted composite of your five dimension scores landed there, or one of the checks on your answers held it there. You can follow how the questions become scores, and the scores one number, under how Twelv places you.

One dimension speaks most directly to this stance, and it is Ego Detachment, which asks how much of your identity rides on being admired, right or in control. A stance built on "when I get it, I will be fine" is one in which the self is waiting to be completed by something outside it, and the test picks that up.

Read the result kindly. Desire is a vigorous, hopeful stance compared with the three below it, and the result simply names where your wanting has been pointed lately, and what the next stance would ask of you.

Frequently asked questions

Related

• Take the free test
• All 12 levels of consciousness
• Fear, level 3
• Anger, level 5
• Courage, level 7: the turning point
• All 12 archetypes
• Shadow work prompts by archetype
• Archetype compatibility chart