WHAT DO YOUREALLY WANT?
Chapter One
The UNwanted....TheWanted....The REALLY Wanted
Regarding the Choice toFocus on What is REALLY Wanted
Have you everencountered a person whose conversation is dominated by what they don't like, what they don't want, and what they hope won't happen? Perhaps you are, yourself, such a person, or aperson who "has days like that." When it comes to generating the thingspeople truly do want in life, these litanies of the unwanted are, at best, unproductive. A person who hangs out with the unwanted is about as likely to produce what theywant as a medieval alchemist was likely to produce gold by tinkering with the chemistry oflead. It's much worse than that, though. By contrast to alchemy, which wasrelatively benign, putting one's focus on the unwanted tends to be deadly, engaging atoxicity which can subtly permeate a person's life, sapping energies which might have gonetoward generating the realities people profoundly hope for.
Eventually, people canbecome so preoccupied with the unwanted that it almost seems they live in a bizarre Landof Life Isn't Working. In such a domicile, one sees the unwanted just abouteverywhere, and life tends to be about the unwanted! This usually means thatlittle time or attention is left over for pursuits such as the aspirations which are bornof people's hopes and dreams. In a way, aspirations become almost irrelevant to lifeas it is lived by a huge number of people. In a MINUS-dominated existence,"relevance" is often a function of managing what you don't want, instead ofcreating what you do want!
It seems obvious that,if we are to have the lives we truly want, we must somehow participate in the creation of our desired realities. The first aspect ofparticipation is being conscious of what is wanted or, perhaps more accurately, beingconscious of what is really wanted. Many people use a huge percentageof their consciousness in focusing on things they don't want. This not only tends tobring forward the unwanted realities, but leaves an inadequate percentage of their beingsavailable to energize, to breathe life into, what they do want. The effect is a bit like filling up a computer's storage space with unwantedinformation and games, and then wondering why there is insufficient capacity for runningthe programs which actually are wanted.
We start, then, withan act of will, THE CHOICE TO FOCUS ON THE WANTED. I am thinking of a particularfriend who had developed a lengthy list of things he "wanted" as part of theproperty settlement during his divorce. Somehow, when he showed me his list, I couldonly feel sad for him. Getting that "stuff" didn't seem to have anythingto do with arriving at joy, nor did the items on the list even seem to particularlyenhance the possibility "survival." Given his mind-set at the time, aboutthe most a person could suggest would have been something along the lines of, "well,maybe if you did 'take it with you' on your demise, you could use it to attempt toconvince someone in the afterlife that you hadn't wasted the opportunity we call'life.'" But even for that purpose, it seemed apparent he ought to come up withsomething more substantial.
So I asked him what he really wanted. He kept repeating "the things on the list." I kept asking, telling him that I just didn't "get" it, that I suspectedhe wanted more than that. A long time passed before he was even able to get in touchwith what I was talking about. Suddenly, his face looked like that of a littlechild. I think I remember that look so distinctly because, up until that moment, heappeared haggard, much older than his years and, if anything, he seemed to bedeteriorating right in front of me as he continued to advocate his earlier choices. Then he said something remarkable. He said, "I'd really like to be thankedfor having done THE MOSTI COULD DO!" He said that from a place somewhere deep inside him, present sincehe was very young, but obscure to him at his current age. It was almost as though hewas reverting to his native language, which he had spoken in some distant childhood,before he had emigrated to a new country in which a "foreign" language becamehis adopted tongue.
My friend is hardly anexception to the rule in this regard. There is a point in life, usually at a veryyoung age, when people - children - stop saying what they really want. Scripture [note: In this book, "Scripture" or "Bible" refers tothe Old or New Testaments, except where otherwise noted; all quotations from Scripture arefrom the Amplified Bible, unless otherwise noted.] talks about the easy access children have to the Kingdom ofHeaven. When we talk about a "loss of innocence," we are making referenceto the point in any person's life when those things which are wanted the most deeplysuddenly come to seem, for whatever reason, "unavailable." After that,life is lived in a manner consistent with the premise of unavailability rather the more"childlike" premise that, when it comes down to it, anything is possible. A person can, of course, make this transition at any age, but this almost always occursbefore "adulthood."
Hopes, once vivid,fade into pale counterfeits which can be "achieved," at most. As seeds go,they are the lesser hybrids of childseeds. A child calls participation withchildseeds "play." As children dance with their chosen symbols ofunfettered hope, they have access, moment by moment, to deep levels of joy andsatisfaction. They do not talk about their "achievements;" there is noneed to. Life Games are a function of childseeds, of unencumbered hopes andaspirations, the sorts which can be spoken without "adult" embarrassment,written in bold letters in the guileless manner of children. Life Games areintrinsically worth living or, if you will, "playing."
After my frienddiscerned and communicated what he really wanted, what participation would truly live inhim as a Life Game, the two of us sat in silence for a while. Each of us took a few moments to simply feel how that profound "want" reallyfelt. Then I asked him what he could do about his property settlement which wouldconstitute "doing the most he could do." At first, the thought was so newto him that he had no idea. When he didsee something whichwould, from his point of view, symbolically represent the most he could do, his choice was... well, "inspiring" is the word which comes to mind. Without reportingthe entire story, suffice it to say that his choice opened the door to a happier existencethan he had been experiencing while he was trying to "manage" his life in theDomain of the Unwanted. Given the nature of the Domain of the Unwanted, after all,the choices which present themselves range from "less than fully life-enhancing"(toxic in a subtle way) to worse than that. Fortunately for my friend, he steppedout of that limited universe long enough to notice that, in life, there really arealternatives to Death Games.
There is a clear andsimple way to tell whether or not you or others are acting in a manner consistent withwhat is really wanted, the genuinely hoped-for. Action consistent with the thingspeople truly hope for is always INSPIRING. Our actions may be moreinspiring or less inspiring, depending upon their degree of commitment, boldness or otherindices, but they are always inspiring.
It has been a numberof years since I have spoken with this particular friend. Perhaps, from his ownpoint of view, he has lived the rest of his life badly, and will continue to do so. I've always thought, though, that a person who does an inspiring thing just once has afighting chance of attempting it again. It isn't just a matter of the rewards whichcan attend such moments in life, such as being honored by oneself (and, on occasion,others). It is that such a venture creates life itself as a valuable place, aterritory in which it is possible to make a difference. Plants and animals, alongwith humans, have needs for the stuff of mere survival: nutrients, air, water, andwhatever other things do not come to my mind as I write this. The greatest needwhich is specifically human, though, is singular and specific: to make adifference. People who do not experience making a difference (including those whoare genuinely making a difference, but are not in touch with the fact that they are doingso) simply do not thrive. If I were a betting person, I would wager that, each timesince that he has gone for the inspiring, the very least which has occurred has been thatmy friend's youth has again been renewed and, more than likely, he has found his own needsbeing fully and liberally met.
But are we taught frombirth that our level of happiness and effectiveness in life is likely to be a function ofinspiration; that we should seek to guide our actions by that which might inspire ratherthan that which is "the most reasonable?" Of course, a person committed to"the reasonable" in life has more than a small measure of difficulty with suchan idea, for the simple reason that inspiration is not measurable in the traditionalscientific ways. How do you measure the resonance of our actions with the best partsof the human spirit? Inspiration is often more of a "gut" or"heart" thing than a "head" thing, which can be uncomfortable from the"head" point of view.
This is not to saythat our thought processes cannot be "enrolled" into supporting the inspiring,just as they can be enrolled into supporting the reasonable. It can be powerful andexciting to watch what happens when the human spirit, which always reaches toward the most inspiring edges of the hoped-for, isgiven the steering wheel, instead of being relegated to the status of back-seat passengerfor the duration of a trip nobody was too excited about taking in the first place! To give our minds the primary responsibility for our aspirations is asking that the workof a very mature adult be performed by a very young and inexperienced child. Thereis nothing wrong with allowing our minds to do what they can do, which is to function in support of the creative spirit. To allow the spirit to be dominated by the mind ... well, it makes a person shudderjust to think about it! Many people, though, trulythink that who they ARE is their thought process. Said slightly differently, theythink they are "the voice in their head." Onewonders who it is they think is listening to that voice! Once a human spirit hasset a course to be followed, an "aspiration" in the best sense of the word, thehuman mind can make a wonderful contribution toward fulfillmentof that aspiration. It is true that "a mind is a terrible thing to waste." It is evenworse to waste the human spirit and, in the process, live out our lives in significantlyless than is available.
As limited as the idea"self-fulfilling prophecy" is, it does give a hint of what is likely at themoment someone injects MINUS into something as life-determining as ASPIRATIONS! Another meaning of "aspiration" is, after all, "breath!" Of course people so often say they just can't breathe during life'sdifficult times. They haven't set in place the foundation which would allow suchthings as easy breathing, happiness and effectiveness.
One of the mostinteresting things about my friend's story is the fact that he truly had thought that hisoriginal list was "what he really wanted!" Ofcourse, he had not thought through the distinction between what he wanted or thought hewanted and what he really wanted. There is often a gaping chasmbetween the two. I wish that he was an exception, and that most of us had by nowdeveloped a finely-tuned sense of what we really want in our lives. Of course, mostof us can come up with a statement of "what we want" in the presence of most ofthe circumstances we encounter in life, including such possibilities as "planning forthe future." It has been my observation, though, that most people areprofoundly unconscious of what they really want. This is true for society, as wellas for people as individuals.
It might be useful forpeople to think in terms of a continuum, a line running from the UNwanted (which we mightlabel "MINUS") toward the wanted ("PLUS"), and then beyond, toward theREALLY wanted (which we might call PURE PLUS):
<---MINUS-------------------PLUS--->--------------PURE PLUS----->
"the UNwanted" "the wanted" "the REALLY wanted"
While it is true thatthe choice to focus on the wanted is a precondition to generating the realities we trulywant in our lives, that choice only opens the door into The Domain of the Wanted. Isuspect that it is always available for us to see a deeper level of"what's wanted" than we have yet encountered, even if we have become prettyexperienced in these matters. The issue might be stated along the following lines:how deeply can we reach into the Pure Plus end of The Spectrum of Life's Possibilities,even in the presence of difficult circumstances?
When considering thequestion "what is really wanted?" in any moment of life, perhaps it might besaid that God's is the voice which speaks to us from Pure Plus. Phrases such as"God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven" imply things going "prettywell" on earth, as opposed to the "hell on earth" which many peopleexperience (create) from time to time. In this sense, when we address the question"what do we really want here?" we are reaching toward the word"miraculous," despite the difficulty so many people have with that word.
One place where wehave traditionally addressed the issue of what is truly wanted in life has been under theheading "theology," and particularly in the process of our various religiousconsiderations and participations. This is not to say that we have always beeneffective in our religious interactions, perhaps because here, too, we spend so much timedealing with the Minus side of the spectrum instead of consciously and deliberatelycreating from the Pure Plus side. It has long been a matter of fascination to me,for example, that people "in conflict," even those who consider themselvesdeeply religious and who are inclined to say things like "God is everywhere,"live their lives in a manner more consistent with the idea "but God is not in you when we are in conflict!" Later, perhaps "after theconflict," the same people will often make the case that God was working in theirlives during the events they labeled "conflict;" but such thoughts are extremelyrare at the time of the interactions.