--Gerald May
God is most often present to me as "I am that I am." My experience of this is usually felt as spaciousness. To my ordinary consciousness it feels like emptiness, a.k.a. boredom, certainly not the "pleasant way" that I prefer. Too often I grow impatient with the Divine presence as I experience it and proceed to repress my longing for God with other desires. The world provides a myriad of options.
For decades I have been shaming myself for this proclivity. Now I'm beginning to see desire itself is a vital gift (even misguided desire--at its root); and so to repress it in the name of holiness is to work against God's purposes. Because desire and longing are indispensible, I don't think it's God's plan to remove them, even though they seem to be the source of suffering and sin.
There has appeared to be only two ways of responding to my desires: satisfy them and reinforce harmful habits, or repress them and lose vital energy and necessary passion--not to mention the unconscious "leaking" that sometimes occurs. I don't think I was ever shown a third way until I became aware of contemplative practices.