It’s still quite a new year, and for many of us, we’re still thinking about what we want for 2016. How do we know what we really want?
Here’s the rub — all of us have had the experience of working really, really hard for something we thought we wanted a lot, and it turned out, we didn’t want it in the way we thought we did.
Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s all “grist for the mill”: the experience of living our life well enough, trying to figure things out, learning as we go along.
But sometimes, we’d like to have a better sense of what we really want. What I’ve begun to notice more and more with clients is that our sense of what we want is limited by what we are currently experiencing, and so, we may have a kind ceiling on what we let ourselves be conscious of desiring.
Here’s an obvious example: Say we have a terrible headache. All we really want is for the pain to stop, seriously. From the place of the pain, we can’t imagine what kind of super duper day we might like to have, or what a lovely meal we’d like to eat, or what kind of connection we might like to have with someone.
Once the pain has been over for a while, we naturally find ourselves returning to wanting those other things, in a way that is spontaneous and natural.
This applies to lots of situations. I just want a guy (or girl) who listens to me. I just want a day where it doesn’t rain. I just want a boss who doesn’t yell. We naturally lower our expectations; in the context of the current limitation, the low-level desire actually sounds pretty good.
The trouble is when the limitation tempts us to want something we don’t really want. I just want my Dad to be proud of me so I’ll go to law school rather than art school. I don’t want my partner to yell at me so I’ll stay quiet. I want the pain of the break up to end so I just want to forget I ever knew him/her.
These feel like desires, but they aren’t, not really. They are temporary limiters of pain, not expressions of the desires of the soul for growth, love, creativity and life.
How do we begin to find our way back to a desire that really expresses our soul-desire? Well, at a certain level, it’s impossible. (Sorry!) We are incarnated, linear, in-time, mortal beings. We have experiences that we are called to live through, as they are.
Having said that, we don’t want to regret choices we make that end up being massive counters to our deepest desires. We want to find a way for the current limiting situation to define our choices, if at all possible.
Lately, I’ve been experimenting with clients to see if there are ways to get to a deeper, “cleaner” desire when they are feeling to limitations of the current situation really pressing in on them. Because if we can find a more soul-based desire, then, we have a better chance of going where we really want to go. (If you really want to go to Chicago while saying that you’re only trying to go to Des Moines, you’re never getting to Chicago.)
All of the best approaches to this, as far as I can tell, are variations on prayer or meditation. And each one includes some variation on what is called surrender or mindfulness.
When are good times to stop and discern our deeper desires? It’s not like we should always be doubting our desires. I’d like to suggest that the moments we should do this kind of soul-exploration is whenever we have a lot of weird emotions going on with a choice or a direction we’re considering taking. If we are freaked out, enraged, heart-broken, intensely anxious, etc., we want to find out what our deeper heart’s desires are about the situation.
When I do this work with clients, I’ve noticed the deeper desires tend to some ready themes: wholeness, reconciliation, creativity, awareness, service, connection. And the deeper desires take a positive view (even in the midst of negative experiences) and reach for…what’s better.
What is your experience of finding your deeper desires even in the midst of limiting circumstances? Please share your thoughts and comments below.
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