I wrote here about my desire to run my own business and how taking a 9 to 5 job may not satisfy that desire. As promised, here I am sharing what I’ve come to understand about desire…

 

I won’t pretend it’s a perfect understanding. It’s what is working for me right now. I lay no claim to it working for you — or for me down the road, for that matter.

 

For a very good chunk of my young adult life, I was majorly influenced by the beliefs of my peers. You remember being 20-something? When you think you know everything still? Really you’re just trying to make sense of the world yourself, trying on beliefs, sticking with what works, throwing out what doesn’t? I’m still doing that, yet back in my 20′s I surrounded myself with my friends. They had opinions. It was super-cool then to be all Buddhist about our world beliefs. Except nobody ever really committed to becoming Buddhist. Everyone just sort of adopted Buddhism as the way to go. Because it seemed like the coolest thing to do at the time. I had concerns, though. If Buddhism is really about not having any desire, what is the purpose of desire? What do we do with all these feeeeeeeelings?

 

As a 20-something, I desired certain things out of life. Normal. Human. Imagine my confusion when my friends (who always seemed so much more intelligent than I since I had not been to university at that point) were spoutin’ off how bad it was to desire ANYTHING. As though the goal in life is to become desire-less.

 

It didn’t fit. For me. How do I stop these feelings of desire? They certainly weren’t, by the way. They were doing their very bests at satisfying all sorts of desires. Sex, alcohol, excellent communal potlucks. Often all three the same night. Maybe I should only speak for myself

 

Without proper understanding of the role of desire in our spiritual evolution (this was way before Science of Mind), I made the decision that it was bad to desire. That wasn’t all…I made the decision – even though it was not a conscious decision at the time – that I was bad for having desires.

 

Can you see how screwed up my thinking was?

 

Here’s what I know: All ideas, including desires, originate from Spirit, the Infinite Expression of the One. These desires are thoughts that arise up through us from Spirit. Desires are LIFE wishing expression by means of me. While it may seem like what we really want is the thing desired, ie the car, the lover, the job, the stuff, the people, the places, what our soul is truly after is the feeling that the fulfillment of the desire will bring.

 

To me, the presence of a desire is sort of like a soul-calling. Or rather, YOUR soul calling out to you saying, “This is who you are. Go after this, want this, because then you’ll know more about who you are!” It’s the only reason we are here on Earth. To know thyself.

 

 

I like to think of my desires as my soul leaving little breadcrumbs for me on my way to finding myself. When I look at desires this way, I think of all the years I spent denying the breadcrumbs that my soul so lovingly threw down for me to notice. I denied what I loved because it didn’t fit with pleasing everyone else around me. I denied what I wanted because I believed I was bad for wanting anything other than what I had. Essentially, I denied my soul. I denied the calling of my soul whenever I listened to someone else and believed them when they said there was something wrong with me for never being satisfied.

 

“You’re never happy…”

“No matter what I do, you’re never satisfied…”

“Why can’t this just be good enough for you?”

 

This was all from believing happiness came from outside of myself. I denied my wants and desires habitually, believing it was the right thing to do. Ultimately, I was denying my soul. I would hear the call in the form of a desire – a career change, a relationship change, whatever… and I would shut it down. I would shut myself off from my self. I rarely listened to that voice. I learned to deny it from a young age. “Don’t want what you don’t already have.”

 

Such bullshit.

 

And I know now, at 50 years of age, it isn’t the desire we want to discard. It’s not possible. It’s the attachment to the desire we want to transmute. It’s learning to understand what the desire really means. When I remember to reframe a desire as being a beautiful gift from beyond, a gift showing me a little breadcrumb to understand who I am and what I came here to do, I can thank the desire for fulfilling its purpose. I can hold it with a feeling of gratitude and I can remember when it arises to pay attention to it because of what it really is.

 

Each and every desire has a way. All that you require for the fulfillment of that desire is within you.  A desire is life longing for expression.

 

Allow desires to arise. You don’t have to act on them. Not right away, not always and not ever. We are completely in choice. Will denying your desires get you what you really want? Seems I can only deny desires for so long. Eventually my desires – the real ones – start banging on the door of my mind for attention. The 9 to 5 job may not satisfy my desire to run my own business. But I don’t know. It may. What I do know is I don’t have to attempt to manipulate life to satisfy my desires. I now say “Yes” to the desires that arise. I look to the feeling I believe that desire will satisfy and I look for the breadcrumbs and focus my attention there. For instance, for a long time I’ve had a small vision board of a white Jetta with the words “Road Joy” written underneath. The Jetta doesn’t really matter (it used to REALLY matter). What is calling to be expressed by means of me is “Joy”. Pure and simple.

 

What desires arise for you that you’ve been denying? Big or small, acknowledge them right now. Just notice them. Say hello to them. Don’t try to make any sense of them or figure out how you’re going to accomplish them. Dare to dream…