What do YOU want?
What do YOU want? Loaded question, right? Quickly, your commercially trained brain will remind you of some material item you’re convinced you “need” like a new handbag, giant rose quartz chunk you saw at the crystal shop last week, or all new pillows for the living room. Perhaps you have reached a phase in your life where you’ve figured out how to get the things you want. You want them and shortly you have them. Even with the quartz in hand you aren’t feeling satisfied.
Sit with the question longer...what do I want? Ideas may start to flow in from another layer. Not what you accumulate, but the way in which you relate. The roles you fill, labels you've embraced. Career or educational achievements, romantic interludes, babies born, number of friends - all as measuring sticks of your value. They can feel, at times, purposeful, but also constraining. When hanging out in this space too long we may unintentionally reinforce misdirected desires by looking to social media for continued inspiration.
What is a misdirected desire? One that is not connected to your higher intelligence or inner knowing. Enter the comparison zone (a tool of advertising). Representations of things or experiences you think you want because want to feel better, less overwhelmed, more satisfied and believe it might help. I mean, she looks happy in her graphic tee, doesn't she? You aren’t clear enough yet to realize it is totally okay to see someone else have (it isn't the shirt you really want, it is something it represents that you crave), honor the feelings that arise, and observe your stuckness as an opportunity and desire to understand and know yourself.
You won’t find yourself in her instafeed. She is, however, resonating with something. That connection is a starting point, information collected, as you work to discover a wound wanting to be seen. You must listen to the wound or "weird" patterns will persist. Sometimes that persistence is an attempt to alight alphabets, a common language you and your wounded parts speak. Desires rooted in advertising are unconscious wound feeders, it isn't listening. They lap it right up to construct a world for you that from their viewpoint is safer. Protected.
As you become aware you may notice your current desires coming from hurt and external messages received. I need a new pair of shoes might actually be I want to see my beauty, as it is without expectation or judgment. I want to feel the sensation of being worthy of love. To be enough with or without the shoes. I don't want to feel so alone.
As you continue to dig in with the intention of compassionately understanding your desires and motivations it is normal to feel more overwhelmed, sometimes more isolated and misunderstood for a period of time. Things can become cloudier before they clear. As you evolve to communicate more directly with your soul you’re entering into unfamiliar territory for a bit. The longer you're in it the more familiar it becomes.
Desiring and purchasing goods isn’t wrong. Scrolling and shopping doesn’t have to elicit shameful feelings or frustration, and if done from a place of awareness, connection and health it won’t. Your check-in system will change. Where you direct your energy will shift. It will become easier to identify what you need in a given moment. Your power returns to you.
How do you know if a wound space is being triggered? When you see someone share something on social media or at a bunch are you annoyed? Jealous? Feel gossipy? Wanting to eat crappy food while binge watching tv? Go shopping mindlessly?
The next time you notice you're participating in an activity with only partial focus. Check in. Ask yourself, what do I want right now? With the want is there a wound? With the wound is the need. Perhaps the need is financial stability, discovering deeper purpose or more aligned use of your energy, or maybe you just want to have fun. With deeper understanding we provide stability to our system, respond to our emotions more accurately, and start to become so clear the sensation of tightness loosens, grasping slows and you enter a place of enjoying the life you’ve created.
