Tell Me What You Want (what you really, really want)

I want something.

I mean I REALLY want it.

I struggle for the words to express how delighted and grateful I am for the return of this feeling after 3 years of the deepest, darkest, scariest, most soul crushing despair imaginable.

With that despair came a morbid ambivalence that left me waking up each morning with dread and already looking forward to going back to bed as soon as possible that evening.

Whatever happened in between those hours was just something to be endured. Enjoyment was fleeting and elusive, impossible to hold in my tired body, shattered heart, or my scrambled brain.

I learned to cry silently, stealthily and always uncontrollably. It was an adjustment to accept the new normal of crying every single day. Once, standing in line at a comedy club and the tears came out of nowhere.

Crying in gas station rest rooms, the garage, on the treadmill, and always the shower or the car.

I learned that if I bent over at the waist, my tears would hit the ground instead of running down my face. Then I wouldn’t ruin my makeup and frighten the civilians.

Being a buzz-kill was never my thing so I pasted on a smile and did the zany routine to dazzle the ones that could be fooled.

None of my real people bought it and I could see in their eyes the pain of empathy and the appreciation of the shallow performance I was offering. Sometimes they characterized it as “brave”. But I knew it was just self consciousness and desperation.

I came to accept it because there was nothing I could do and no energy to do it.

I didn’t want anything except another hug from my dead son.

Since I couldn’t have that, I just didn’t care.

I had no desire.

And it felt like death.

I think desire is an underappreciated human characteristic.

We have come to relate it to greed, lust, and gluttony which are a different thing entirely.

According to Charles Fillmore, “Desire is the onward impulse of the ever evolving soul”.

It serves a holy purpose in leading us to our highest and best good.

We all have it so it must have been implanted by our creator.

When we don’t allow ourselves to listen and follow the desires of our hearts, we turn to overindulgence in unhealthy substitutes. I truly believe that if we struggle with any of those addictions it is because we stopped listening to our true desire.

I think we all have the wisdom within to fulfill our ultimate joy and happiness but we have had it conditioned out of us.

We try to use our heads and figure out what we should want. What it is reasonable to want. And then we try to want that.

That is bass ackwards.

The first step is to go within and feel our true desire of the heart.

The thinking part is secondary, to help us figure out how to get it.

My spiritual teacher Edwene Gaines says you don’t have to justify your desires. It only has to make sense to you, no one else.

She is the first person who ever gave me permission to want what I want.

Anyway, today I am going for what I want. There is risk. I may not get it.

But there is hope that I will.

And there is a new appreciation that whatever the outcome, I am here, I am alive, and I am not finished yet.

I now respect the desires of my heart as holy guidance to my happiness and well-being. I now release any unskillful thought, belief, or action that would prevent me from reaching my highest and best good.

I am truly grateful for the energy of desire, that pulls me toward the abundance, wholeness, and joy that is the only will of Love, which is another name for God.

Thank you God for my life, for my desire, and for the energy and faith to speak it and believe it into being.

And so it is…