What Do You Want? (Are You Clear About What YOU Want?)

Wanting and desire often get a bad rap in the spirituality and consciousness movement.This is a common, profoundly limiting mindset that sabotages the true role of “wanting,” leaves you with a host of “bad” feelings and a lot of self-judgment.

Wanting… longing… the desire to close the gap between where you are and what you are able to imagine for yourself… these are the drivers of your life.

Some people disguise their “naked ambitions” and some flaunt them…but I’ve yet to meet anyone who didn’t have them.

Whether you see yourself mostly as a Buddhist practicing non-attachment, an entrepreneur practicing success manifestation, or a new parent practicing sleep-deprivation, you are continuously wanting to move away from suffering and towards joy.

Moment to moment you are wanting a wide variety of things, from the food you’ll eat in the next five minutes to a vision of the lifestyle you desire and think is still ten years away. WANTING is not the problem. The crazy conflicted beliefs we play back to ourselves about what we want and what it says about what kind of person we are — our value — THAT is the problem.

It’s NOT the wanting or desire itself that causes suffering. So, why is that so hard for us to live with?

The first reason is our Western culture sends a lot of very confusing messages about wants and goals:

• wanting time for myself is selfish- success is good, but striving or ambition is bad
• wanting money is greedy
• beautiful (usually thin!) is good, but concern with appearance is vanity
• wanting life to slow down means I’m lazy
• wanting recognition means I’m prideful/shallow

Is it any wonder almost all of us spend considerable time conflicted about our wants, our desires? We spend incredible amounts of time and psychic energy spinning in a sea of whether it’s OK to want whatever it is we want. Yes, of course this is a waste of energy, yet it’s also a massive contributor to feeling a sense of lack and confusion, rather than a sense of profound abundance and easy manifestation.

But it’s more than just a neurotic time and energy waster. Our refusal to softly allow what we actually want — to follow our desires through their life cycle like a flower bud opening — can be a cause of tremendous suffering. Instead of blooming perfectly, exactly as intended, we fracture. We sacrifice (Somehow, Somewhere, Things Went Horribly Wrong) parts of ourselves in our attempts to “be good” in a maze of inherently contradictory value beliefs about what we actually do want.

Consider:

— a very high-level, successful entrepreneur has as her first priority something other than money. She values adventure, exploration, creativity — money isn’t the priority but simply one of several means to travel, learn, and explore. She begins to accept labels that increase her conflict, such as hedonist — a pleasure-seeker — which she knows is “lazy”, and “bad”. She is in tears feeling that she is failing, compared to some of her fellow business leaders (where only money is the measure of success). Ironically, she is also in tears feeling that she is succeeding! Living a life she enjoys, yet is branded and judged. Triggered by comparisons when she approaches other’s expectations, and triggered by comparisons when she approaches her own feelings of worthiness and abundance, she’s created a lovely no-win soup.

The suffering here is not in her desires. The suffering is in her comparisons, in her beliefs about the value, the meaning — of those desires. Imagine what might happen if she spent the same amount of energy she is using to spin amid a sea of judgement (Stick, Don’t Spin) to simply allow herself to open a space where her wants can simply be there?

– a self made, wealthy, Native American woman from a troubled background has been praised her whole life for her intelligence, perseverance, and business analysis skills (success comes in the form of achievement, intelligence, and emotional control). A new mother, she finds herself completely torn to pieces by wants she cannot reconcile. On the one hand, she wishes to continue her business expansion, (the single largest source of positive reinforcement in her life thus far — she wants to keep those good feelings). On the other, the experience of motherhood and the pain of being away from her baby for her business awaken deep longings encouraging her to soften into her intuitive heart, her mothering, and her relationships. For her, these are two polarized, unconnected realities. Standing in her perception of achieving business “person”, she feels her desire for softness as weak. Standing in her perception of softness and mothering, she perceives her desire for recognition and success as selfish and proof of “bad mothering.”

This seemingly either/or choice is what brings her to her knees. What might happen if she simply accepted wanting both, simply claimed ownership of both parts of her, rather than seeing them as opposing forces in a duel to the death?

The truth is, getting it intellectually, is a good beginning.

Actually experiencing the breakthrough that creates sustainable energetic, embodied, cellular integration is life-changing — and that’s what Success Without Sacrifice is all about.

Today, I invite you to CELEBRATE what you want! Bring some air into your true desires! TRUST that your desires arise from a pure, positive intention — that strong, steady lighthouse of your soul or Spirit. Trust that following what you want leads to your next evolution and opens your next door.

We welcome your comments and would love to know how you are experiencing your wants and desires…how much space do you give yourself??