#023 - What Do You Really, Really Want – And Why Do You Not Feel Deserving Of It?

I was thinking about the ways in which we can stand in our own way when it comes to our desires. The way that we can block the very thing that our soul is yearning for. What came to me thinking about this was a metaphor:

Imagine arriving at a magical dinner party – there is a buffet comprising of all the foods imaginable. The rarest flavours, the most tantalising textures, magnificent displays, mouth-watering aromas, the most exquisite interplay of tastes.

This cornucopia of delights excites you. At first you are tasting everything – the variety and abundance of delicacies is ecstatic and somewhat overwhelming. Soon – however, your palate begins to numb, and your stomach is getting full. The experience begins to lose it’s novelty.

You start to feel that maybe you don’t wish to eat everything mindlessly, but instead, you would prefer to eat fewer different things, that you really enjoy the flavour of. You only wish to eat that which will give you the most nourishment, the most satisfaction. You would rather be more selective, rather than dilute your experience and enjoyment by continuing to eat everything.

Now you get a little more quiet – you walk a little slower, paying a little more attention to your senses. You connect to a place inside yourself and you ask: “What do I really feel like eating?”

Is it savoury, or sweet? Is it bitter, tangy, sour, umami? Is it hot or cold? Is it rich or light? Is it spicy or herbal?

Once you start building an understanding – your senses activate and start looking for what will be food for your soul. You follow the sights and smells. You listen to overheard conversations about what foods were served in another room at the party. You let your steps be guided by your own intuition as well.

Now – what happens next will depend on a number of factors.

Do you allow yourself to follow what you desire, or are you too busy worry that everyone else is having a good time and getting to eat what they want?

Are you getting sidetracked by conversations, making up excuses for why you should do a million other things first and delay your quest to finding your heavenly dish?

Perhaps you arrive at the right station, but will you allow yourself to take a plate? Or are you holding back because you believe that surely everyone else wants to have the same dish and there will not be enough to go around? Do you believe that on some level - it would be selfish to have the very dish you want?

And by not taking out a plate – you miss seeing that at this magical dinner party – any food that is taken will simply replenish itself in a greater quantity. There is no danger of it running out – it is just an illusion that you have brought with you from the world in which you lived before.

In your guilt-ridden obsession about your deservingness of this particular food – you also miss that most of the other guests are in fact enjoying a completely different set of dishes. Other people have different tastes to you and what they most enjoy has a completely different flavour and texture to what you desire. In your fear, your vision remained narrow and you assumed that everyone else is after exactly the same thing as you.

Perhaps you feel guilty about being at this dinner party in the first place – feeling bad about the privilege that other people don’t have. You believe that other people cannot have access to it and so you deny yourself from partaking. Instead of guiding those who are outside to the magical dinner party, you restrain yourself from the enjoyment. You feel a pinch of resentment looking at the other guests who are eating from the tables and the enjoyment they experience.

This somewhat clumsy imagery is to illustrate how we can sometimes approach our dreams and desires. We can hold stories that justify us not going for what we want – and fail to every question or explore whether they are actually true. Or we may think that we have explored something – but been blind to the fact that if we hold a certain belief as true – we are likely going to seek evidence to confirm it as true. Confirmation bias, as some call it.

Now if you feel that some of these patterns resonate with you – that on some level you are holding yourself back from letting yourself go for what you really, really want – I have a question for you:

Who are you serving by holding back on your desire?

Who does it favour, for you to not have what you want?

These are not rhetorical questions – nor are they ones to be answered with the logical mind.

Here are a couple more:

What might it mean about you if you did or had [X] ?

What do you fear others would think if you went for [X]?

The answers to these questions hold the key to the origins and the solution to your pattern.

Somewhere down the line it became imprinted into your belief system that you being in full communion with your authentic desire is something to be avoided.

Perhaps it was the fear-induced scarcity mindset: You having this is away from someone else

Perhaps it was programmed as something risky and dangerous: Others will be jealous of you, it’s safer to keep your desire inside the protective blanket rather than exposing it and showing to the world what is your heart’s deepest desire

Perhaps it’s the fear of failure or loss: To admit what you truly desire but to not attain it – or to attain it but then to lose it – again feels riskier than to keep it buried away

Perhaps it’s the narratives around deservingness – letting guilt, shame and co-dependent patterns to keep you from actually feeling like you deserve to have what you want. This in turn creates a million of those little stories that inhibit you from taking any tangible steps towards your desires, either. They can cause you to interpret every situation, everything that happens in your life – as proof of why you’re not deserving. Confirmation bias, remember.

And that is why becoming aware of our minds and the beliefs we hold is so important.

Not just beliefs about ourselves, but about the world around us, too (‘Does everyone really want the same magical dish, that will soon be all-consumed, as me?’)

We should remember that the beliefs we hold contribute to the collective as well. If we believe that we have to fight and compete to survive – then through our actions and our words – we reinforce that belief for others too. If – on the other hand – we believe that we deserve to do and have the very thing we Really, Really want – well, then we are carving out the space for others to believe that for themselves too. And like the magical dish – a belief like that can never run out. Instead, we are inviting more and more people to join us at the feast.