By Nancy Rynes, author of Awakenings from the Light
Goals, plans, desires, resolutions. This is the time of year when many of us consider the things we want to accomplish in the coming 12 months. While goal-setting and planning are great ideas and things I personally do, I want to take the time to write about something else today.*
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| photo courtesy viZZZual.com |
For many, after we write down our goals, our thoughts might turn to the popular subject of "manifesting," and that's what I will focus on the next couple of weeks.** Is there an easier, more straightforward way to get what we want? Some people say that "manifesting" is just that. Manifesting is the concept that we can potentially influence the energies around us in order to bring us the things we desire, and was the subject of the movie The Secret. I've written a wee bit about this in my book Awakenings from the Light and will delve into it in more detail in my next book.
While we can try to manifest things such as a newer car, a spiffy electronic gadget, or new home, for some of us this may somehow feel not quite right. It may not seem as though the new car or the new job is what we really want, like there is something more to this manifesting thing that we can't quite pin down.
If that's you, I might suggest you try digging deeper, past the level of the material, down below the ego and into what your soul truly craves.
Here is one exercise to get you started:
Get quiet. Take some alone-time away from your computer, phone, kids, and job.
Write down 5-10 "superficial" things (or more if you're Type-A) that you would like in your life: a newer car, a bigger house, a new job. It's perfectly OK to want these things so go ahead and write them down.
For each one of those superficial things, try to go deeper. Is there a deeper desire that a new car or new house would address? For example, you might desire a bigger house so that you can entertain more family and friends, have more children comfortably, and get a dog or two.
Go deeper again. What underlies the desire to entertain or have kids? Perhaps the desire to connect more deeply, strongly, and meaningfully with those you love is the basis. Or, it may be that you want to create more love for yourself and others through gatherings of the people closest to you.
Below are a few more examples:
A pay raise => more money to take vacations => freedom, and the ability to travel to ________ in order to connect more strongly with my spiritual roots or a spiritual mentor
A pay raise => pay off bills => freedom from debt and more time to spend volunteering for a charity
A bigger home => a dedicated art/creativity space => the desire to create beauty and to connect more strongly to Spirit through my creativity
In addition to working on bringing to us the material things we want, we can try to incorporate what our souls crave into any goal-setting or manifesting practices, too. It's my personal opinion that is exactly what our culture in the USA is lacking: listening to what our souls truly desire and then working to give them what they crave. While a new house or car is nice, and we do indeed need "stuff" in order to live in this material world, many of us seem to concentrate only on gratifying our egos with material things. In the meantime, the soul is often neglected. Neglecting our souls' deepest desires can cause us to feel hollow and unfulfilled.
The ego is the part of us that tells us to get "more": more stuff, a bigger house, a nicer car, a higher-powered job. It wants us to be safe and successful, to possess things that demonstrate to our neighbors that we're good enough, successful, that we are better than everyone else, or that we fit in. Success and nice things are fine as far as they go and as long as we keep them in perspective. But what the soul tells us, and what it really craves, is something much more elusive.
The soul tends to crave the deeper and more meaningful. It might desire connection: with others, with the planet, with animals, with creativity, or with Source/Spirit/God. The soul might desire fun, peace, harmony, understanding, being of service, living in joy, experiencing the grandness of this planet, or helping others. What does your soul crave?
Acknowledge what the ego wants but then dare to go deeper.
And remember, practice feeing grateful for the things you actually do have in your life, right now.
We'll dig in a little further next week. Thanks for reading, and blessings.
Nancy
* Jack Canfield covers goals and planning in his book The Success Principles, so if you are interested in straightforward approaches to achieving specific goals, check it out on Amazon.com.
** My colleague and friend, Ken Elliott, has written a book on a particularly straightforward approach to manifesting using visualization, called Manifesting 1-2-3. You can purchase it on Amazon.com.
Posted by Nancy Rynes, author of Awakenings from the Light ( http://NancyRynes.com )
All content copyright Nancy Rynes, 2015