What Do You Want My Dear?

I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.- Mark Twain

So many of us just assume we’re not going to get what we want so we adjust our vision and instead go after what we think we can get, what we think is possible, what we think makes sense. We’ve been given the message that it’s not OK to want, or it’s not possible to get what we want and so we’ve become terrified to let ourselves want for fear that it will just lead to heartbreak and disappointment.  We spend our time passively accepting what comes our way; bobbing up and down in the sea of life–adrift and directionless.

We walk around in a fog, suffering from amnesia because we have wiped out our deep desires and then we wonder why we’re so unhappy and unfulfilled.  Everything is out of balance because we’re not aligned with our wants and we’re accepting substitutes in lieu of the real thing.

We don’t feel like ourselves, things don’t make sense.

Trying to fill the real want with something else is actually the seed of addiction.  It’s why we eat too much, drink too much, work too much.

There’s a brilliant quote out there that says:  “You can’t get enough of what you don’t really want.”

Sometimes our wants are just symbols for something deeper; but if you don’t follow the desire, you can’t get to what’s underneath it. For example when there’s something you want (and the bigger the better for this exercise) you can fill in the blanks to figure out if there’s a deeper thing:  When I get ____________, the sensation I’ll feel is______________.  I encourage you do to this little exercise, there’s a lot of information in it.

At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.

And now I will end at the beginning, with the question I started with.  I encourage you to ask yourself in the most loving tone you can muster, as many times a day as you can remember to do it:
“What do you want, my dear?”
Be patient while waiting for the answer, even if the answer does not come.  It will come eventually.  And, there is love and power in the asking.