What’s Wrong with What You Want?
Obviously, there are short-comings within the unconscious language of desire; beyond that is simply the issue of empowerment within the context of undesirable, challenging, or even tragic circumstances.
When was the last time you consciously wanted or desired something unpleasant? Uh, like… never.
What’s Wrong with Words
Wanting something, needing something, is by definition lacking it. I’m always contemplating powers of manifestation and laws of attraction within the context of language — how language can certainly enhance your power, but also how it often insidiously detracts. The word choices you make when you speak and write are indications of the same subtle nuances of language with which you think and form thoughts. Those thought-forms are your invoices to the Universe — the framework of your intentions can be shaky or even subversive, carrying microscopic cancers that subconsciously sabotage your will, quietly, over time, little by little.
One general prescription I’d like to share with you is reframing what you want in terms of who you want to become. Who you are becoming. Who you are.
In the last few years, we’ve all heard so much about the power of gratitude and how your intentions magnify and attract whatever you focus on. Whatever you place on the throne of your attention is what you get. So, if you focus on a list of what you want and what you need, you’re always identifying what you lack.
You Want Only Good
The list of what you want, need, require — it’s all good stuff, isn’t it? Who wishes for undesirable things? Who wants to invite challenging circumstances into their lives? Who asks to attract relationships with people who are not good for you? Who consciously wills disasters for life lessons?
I personally think telling someone suffering from cancer that she manifested her disease is hatefully oversimplifying a very complex set of circumstances. It strays into helpless, “religious” notions of a judgmental god who micromanages and punishes a person for her very thoughts. (I need to save my further thoughts on this part of the conversation for another time… First, I need to go explain to a grasshopper that he manifested my lawnmower.)
The reality is that you experience tons of undesirables across the course of your life. Without trying. You probably feel like a real pro when it comes to getting what you don’t want.
You’ve worked hard at developing a philosophical resignation or reframing process that allows you to bless the most difficult aspects of your life as part of your mission:
- You learn from your mistakes
- You identify patterns of behavior and consciously, willfully break them or behave your way into new responses and better courses of action
- You see the double-edged sword that bears Victim on one side and Victor on the other
That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Your battle scars are badges of honor.
With all the wonderful spiritual benefits of terrible things, why don’t you wake up every day muttering mantras of more doom and hardship?
When was the last time you thought
“I want… something heartbreaking to occur today.”
“I need … an incurable disease to kick my ass toward a sense of simple joy and profound purpose.”
“I sure wish the universe would send me…another co-dependent, unhealthy relationship.”
Your most challenging moments are what defines you — your senses of empowerment and spiritual development become most apparent during the tests, trials, and tribulations. I heard Cheryl Richardson say something to the effect of “I think we can all agree that we didn’t come here to drive SUVs and go to the mall.”
Whether you consciously realize it or not, what you really want is not about what you need, what you hope to have, or what you wish to acquire, so much as your journey is about who you become.
And who you are becoming is who you are — you are already everything you’ve ever wanted to become. Your authentic self is a seed within you which you uncover, expose, allow to grow from your core. Who you are, who you become in this life is already here in some form.
Think about the relationship between what you want to have and who you hope to become — who you can be, who are you when everything is just peachy, and who are you in spite of whatever shit you’re given to work through?
Another word for shit is compost, and gardeners have a wonderful understanding of how one reframes its value. It enriches the soil. And maybe that’s another way to get grounded.
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18 Responses to “What’s Wrong with What You Want?”
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Oh, I love this post SO much!
Authenticity seems like it would be so easy - yet, here we all are, seemingly trapped under layer after hardened layer of unpleasant smallness and limitation that refuses to let our Light shine through. No wonder that it takes negative events to smash through that crust so that we can catch a glimpse of our own magnificence. And then we still often refuse to own it!
I love your point about focused attention - do we focus on those hard layers that separate us from our true Self? Or do we simply dwell in that still, small center and express ourselves from there?
I think those layers of limitation can just fall away - sometimes that looks like a massive rearranging of our life circumstances, but rather than a painful event it can be a relief to shed their burden of inauthenticity. I guess it depends on whether we’re willing to embrace change …
Great stuff!
Blessings,
Andrea
Another word for shit is compost…
I’m going to ponder this analogy a bit and see what sort of message I get about life shit.
As a garden geek of the highest magnitude, I’ve been extolling the virtues of compost for years. It is, in my opinion, one of the coolest miracles of the universe.
I once drug my then-adolescent son out to the compost pile on a frigid winter day to show him how digging under the unassuming, crusty upper-layer of matted, dead leaves revealed steaming hot, rich, black soil. He thought I was a freak. I, however, think it’s amazing that I can toss a bunch of *worthless* organic trash into a pile and turn it into something that not only sustains life, but makes it extraordinary.
Slade,
I want to thank you for the “throne of attention” image. When I am setting my intentions, I often struggle to concretize abstract things in order to clarify my own thoughts and actions. I am definitely going to start thinking in terms of “placing” my abstracts onto the concrete “throne” in order to focus my attention to a narrow spotlight (of sorts).
I’ve always been a person who knows who she is & what she wants to achieve. I mean, I never had to backpack across Europe — or fill-in-the-blank — to “find myself.” I’ve just somehow always sensed the larger picture of my journey — even back when I was a tween. You could say I’ve been extremely blessed that way.
It’s only been in the last 10 years or so that my action-inspired “wants” got derailed by external circumstances. Reclaiming my focus without losing sight of my true intentions has been a challenge, to say the least. I have come to realize that my thoughts are really the things that got derailed, more so than life’s circumstances. As you can imagine, it has been a downward spiral. All it takes is one bad thought planted in your mind, and then everything grows around it to manifest more bad stuff. But, like an oyster that grows layers of flesh around a speck of dust, the pearl is somewhere at the center of all this. I am diving every day to find it….
Love & Light,
Jewels
P.S. I appreciate the “compost” imagery as well.
Hey,
Cheers- this follows along nicely with the other article regarding the word “should”. Thank you.
The comments listed are also interesting and thoughtful.
Its cool to get this site on Sunday before the week begins because it gives me time to amplify my intentions for the week and a stronger vocabulary to talk to my Guides with. Yahoo and thanks again!
always eileen
Slade,
It can be very powerful to fully accept all the good and bad in one’s life. Over the years I’ve felt several times that an offer to relieve the pressure, to go back to the half-sleep of an unremarkable life was right within my reach. I would just have to take it and leave all the messy business of being conscious, of having a purpose, behind.
But no matter how hard the times seem to be, every time I contemplate that offer, there’s only one thought going through my head: “Just bring it on!”. No matter what the circumstances, I feel that I can ultimately handle them, and emerge stronger than before.
In that sense, I’m directly asking for trouble, but it’s pretty damn close to that.
Vitor
This post made me think of the axiom , “it’s all good.” Composting is an excellent metaphor for life. The heat that’s generated in the transformation of garbage into fertilizer is astounding. Isn’t that what we are doing when life gives us lemons and we make lemonade? How sweet it is!
I took your suggestion and I’ve been thinking about the relationship between Peachy Tom and Working-Through-the-Shit Tom. Although Peachy Tom is more relaxed and at ease he does not show his strength and focus like his brother Shit-working Tom. It’s all me and I’m all good.
Thanks Slade, wonderful writing and brilliant idea cultivation.
[…] I just read a powerfully stimulating post by Slade Roberson at Shift Your Spirits. Read his latest post, What’s Wrong with What You Want? Slade said, “Your most challenging moments are what defines you — your senses of empowerment and spiritual development become most apparent during the tests, trials, and tribulations.” […]
Wow, I’m so grateful for the positive response to this post! I love being surprised by how it was received and the great extensions of where you guys take my words and run with them…
Andrea,
Thank you! Your metaphor of tragic circumstances breaking through the crust… Awesome. You’ve truly illustrated, so graphically and simply, something Extra with your comment. My words are always blessed with how you engage them.
Lola,
Your authentic, literal garden geekiness takes it to a rich new level. What you revealed to your son, the miracle of that warmth and life force hidden beneath the snow — another great image to see reflected back to me. The idea of “shit” as a “miracle” gives my contemplations an even greater positive spin. Thank you!
Jewels,
Diving for pearls — you guys are all poets. Rock on!
Eileen,
I’m so glad you feel that way about my Sunday publication — this is very much an intentional choice, meant to be used just as you describe. I know that Sundays feel like an “ending” to something positive, for so many in our culture, and I do hope to offer something to Begin the energy of a new week. Thank you for getting that and for articulating it.
PS — Should — someone left a wonderful comment on that post about “shoulding all over yourself.” I like that expression even more.
:-)
Vitor,
The cool thing is — having one intention — to operate from the awareness of your highest, most authentic self — actually simplifies and renders obsolete the duality between Good and Bad. By assuming this one position, a complete range of circumstances is accounted for. A sense of purpose is ideally constant. It’s sort of a multipurpose magical tool.
Tom,
In your empowered state, the application of your power is secondary — you are Tom, and it’s All Good. Real solutions are rarely complicated. Love your use of the word cultivation, here — another wordsmith moment here in the comments. Very cool.
Hi Slade,
Great article and certainly thought provoking.
I believe we are who we are supposed to be. If we are not, then who are we? After all, if we can’t control our own ’self’, then what chance do we have with everything else? Of course we are all a product of our experience and our experience isn’t always our own doing, but that’s a different matter altogether. But basically, I believe we’ve decided how we want to play out our lives and decided what type of person we want to be.
Manifesting our reality happens whether we want it to or not, with every single thought, conscious or unconscious, and as a result the universe creates/reflects what we think. From my own experience I believe life is pre-determined, well, regarding the ‘major’ events that have happened in my life, so if these major events are pre-determined what about the small ones? Maybe our subconscious knows what our lives have in store for us and without us even being conscious of thinking about it they happen because we have thought about them on a subconscious level - our higher self. And why all the bad stuff? Like you say, we don’t wake up ‘wishing’ for something bad to happen every day, but unconsciously we do. On a conscious level some people might say ‘I hope xyz doesn’t happen’ and guess what, it does. The mere mention of ‘xyz’ is enough to make it happen big time. Maybe the universe can’t differentiate between positive and negative. I have one friend who goes from literally one disaster to another. It’s quite unbelievable. And what does she say? ‘EVERYTHING GOES WRONG IN MY LIFE.’ And it does. What a surprise. And then she says ‘I wish EVERYTHING wasn’t so BAD’.
But how can we appreciate the good things in life if we don’t have the bad? How can we appreciate happiness if we don’t experience sadness? How can we know what it is to be healthy if there are no diseases and pain? Why does darkness fall after the light of day? It seems one can’t exist without the other. It’s how it is. How it was created. How it will always be. So do we manifest the end of the day and the darkness which follows? No. It’s pre-determined. We know it’s coming. Do we manifest everything in our lives? Maybe, maybe not. My guess is that’s pre-determined also and what we think on a conscious or unconscious level maybe that’s pre-determined too.
I know people talk a lot about free will, but I’m not so certain we have it while on the physical plane. Maybe we had free will while in spirit when we ‘chose’ our life’s path - the good, the bad, the happy times and the sad, our health and our illnesses. We are who we are, maybe our lives are how they should be also,
It’s my first comment here; although I’ve been reading your blog since a few weeks ago.
You’ve posted a thought-provoking article. I like it when you said “Your authentic self is a seed within you which you uncover, expose, allow to grow from your core.” I’m on this journey to discovering who I really am. It’s amazing that I’m uncovering truths that I’ve never known before.
Thanks for your article!
Evelyn
Slade, I love your words about shit turning to compost. The challenges or shit in my life have definitely become the compost out of which my true self has grown and blossomed into the beautiful flower that I am today. That beautiful flower bit isn’t coming from arrogance or ego. It is coming from the joy of where I am right now in my life. That compost has grounded me in the full power of who I am. Thanks for the part that you have played in that blossoming. I missed having our Sunday evening class yesterday. The growth that that class started in me is still expanding.
Julie,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I definitely agree with you about the Universe not making a distinction between Yes-A-Thing and No-A-Thing. I also agree that many people suffer from inverse manifestation — “Horrible things always happen to me,” “I have the worst luck,” etc.
However, I strongly disagree with you that our lives are predetermined. Nope, sorry, don’t believe that at all. I feel that’s a very dangerous attitude. I willfully choose to believe otherwise. Every second, in the present, is a process of dynamic creation.
And free will — sorry, again, I absolutely believe in free will; though I will concede that I feel free will is much less densely strained and filtered by circumstance in a pure spirit form, free of the third-dimensional physical. Not believing in your free will, well, isn’t that as self-fulfilling as your friend who states “everything goes wrong in my life”?
Evelyn,
Welcome! I’m very glad to have your comments. I checked out your site — I dig the concept of “abundance consciousness” — very nice!
Patricia,
You are definitely not alone in discovering and spinning the blessings in all the bad shit that’s happened to you. We have no better choice but to transform ourselves from victim to victor — using the exact same material.
You are so kind to say how you missed our Sunday evening class. We’ll have to cook up some more classes in the near future, for sure! I thought of you Monday night while watching Psychic Kids.
:-)
Nicely said. I’m definitely struggling to get out of the “white tower” of spirituality and to apply it in the world of fender benders, litter boxes and bills that I actually live in.
Dawn,
A bit of healthy irreverence goes a long way for me too!
:-)
Hi Slade,
“And who you are becoming is who you are — you are already everything you’ve ever wanted to become.”
Hmm…. I wasn’t sure where you were going with this piece, although I was enjoying the ride. But you just had to end with this little bit here. On the one hand, I couldn’t agree more. And yet….
The big question for me is: who is the “you” that you already are? It seems that no matter where we turn in spirituality we are always confronted with identity. Ramana Maharshi’s constant comment to his visitors: find out who is the one that is (talking, acting, wanting, hoping, etc.). We must, in the end, always turn within and find out who we are.
Either you are a closet non-dualist, Slade, or I’m reading more into this post than there is.
Or it’s just late at night. Namaste.
Tom,
Your insight about being confronted with identity is very true and powerful. I think your question, whether it is un-answerable or not, is something I find myself asking a lot.
I also find myself mentioning a lot that the questions we ask are more important than the answers…
The limitations of language are apparent, here, aren’t they? Time is a factor — be/ become; the “space” of identity — internal/ external; dualities are especially hard to escape in language/ culture — I believe in shooting for the middle, the Power of the In Between, but can’t claim to be able to quickly define beautiful shades of grey and silver without a spot of black and a swirl of white and a clumsy stirring motion…
:-)
And I wonder how you get into the very deepest concepts of consciousness/ sentience / awareness without running into identity. It’s not that I think God is a narcissist, because I don’t feel the god consciousness we represent is mature — I feel God is a baby, so recently birthed through us — and we’re still wiggling about on our backs in the cosmic crib, training our eyes on the bright mobiles of the heavens, and our developing new vision is awestruck by the reflection of our own eyes, in the little fun-house mirror hanging on the bars…
“I feel God is a baby, so recently birthed through us — and we’re still wiggling about on our backs in the cosmic crib, training our eyes on the bright mobiles of the heavens, and our developing new vision is awestruck by the reflection of our own eyes, in the little fun-house mirror hanging on the bars…”
beautiful.
I go around much of the time wondering, “when did all these baseball players get here?”
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