Does your life reflect your heart’s desires?
When I hear the phrase, “You reap what you sow!”, I can picture my Aunt Myrtles’ piercing brown- black eyes and her mouth clamped shut in final punctuation. The meaning was unmistakable. It was all about punishment for misdeeds. And, man – I was guilty all day long! I didn’t say thank you. I didn’t smooth the pleats in my kilt before I sat down. I cried when she made me cut hair in a ‘pixie’ style. I refused to eat her lumpy burned gravy and it was decades before I ate parsnips again! (who boils them?) I was ungrateful, unmanageable, and ‘too moody for my own good’.
It hardly matters now when I reflect that she was probably flung into an emergency with her brother’s three children when their mum lost her grip and ended up in hospital – that hospital. She died before I was old enough to understand her or begin to forgive her. So she just lodged herself as my inner voice of critical reason, caution, and propriety. She doesn’t always ask permission to opine, but I have gotten firmer in telling her to button it up. Before you think I am hearing voices and am ready for the bin myself, let me just say that Aunt Myrtle is just a handy reference for the unexamined script that ran my life for decades.
We often don’t know where we got this sense of unworthiness. We might blame our genes – but this is not in our physical cells. This current runs through our emotions – the electrical charges. Can you feel it? I know I can right now as I remember. It reaches right across my chest and grips my two shoulders. I’m sure this is the path it took in my little body before it reached up my neck into my face as a blush. Then the tears of anger and humiliation. Potent mix! I was so often embarrassed or ashamed for just being me. I was never even really naughty. What a waste!
So what happened then? Aunt Myrtle died. My mother came home (after five years) and we cobbled our family back together with the tacks of blunted emotions. Were we different from other families? Only by degree or circumstance. I grew up in a neighbourhood where the parents of my friends had been in concentration camps and lost whole families. There’s another thing – I didn’t deserve to be upset or petulant in face of real tragedy. But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Gilda Radner’s wonderful character, Roseanne Roseannadanna, said it best, “It’s always something!”
It really doesn’t matter what ‘something’ cages us – horrendous circumstances or misguided goodness. If the bird of our soul is caged then it cannot fly. Often long after the captors of our spirit are gone we hobble along like the ladies of ancient China on their tiny bound feet. We have embraced our own crippled nature as if, in its familiarity, it is who we really are. The tether, long since severed in the physical, continues to bind us emotionally. The result is we transfer the power of the captors of our spirit onto other external ‘authority’.
That could continue to be our parents: “Forget being a musician – get a career!”, Our teachers: “You’ll never be a painter if you don’t paint this way.” Our religion: “The words to the prayer for forgiveness are thus.” Our lovers: “You sound so lame when you sing!” So we cut and prune ourselves and launch into the grown up world – right into the hands of the media. Too old! Too fat! Too bald! This car! That house! Our beer! We are so out of touch with who we really are, we grasp at anything that makes us believe we might fly. Viagra. Botox. Zoloft. Hummer. Versace. Smirnoff.
So. We plant a rose. Roses are good. Everybody likes them. Can’t go wrong with that. Except as beautiful as they are, and as sweet as they smell, it is not what we really want. Roses stand apart from us in a vase. To be observed and admired. It is not a rose that can satisfy our longing. Our desire. What our soul craves is a ripe fig. Split open. Seeds and juice spilling into our mouth and overflowing our chin. Messy but nourishing. Satisfying. Pleasurable. Succulent. Ohhh, but isn’t it a little embarrassing to be so outspoken about such sensuality? Isn’t it wrong or impolite to say what we really desire? How we really desire to feel? How we truly desire to be loved. Haven’t we been taught that what we really desire – our scruffy sweater, our ten year old car, our familiar and cozy house, a simple job that leaves our mind free – whatever – is not what we should want?
Hmmmm. It’s all a little confusing isn’t it? Lately there are more books, movies, CD’s and seminars about the law of attraction. It’s absolutely true. But the problem is we are attracting from the want and not the desire. Big difference! We want to fit in. We want to achieve. We want a yacht. We want a Mercedes. We want a villa on the beach. We want to win the lottery. We want a rose. The trouble with wants is they are like Chinese food. They fill us up but we are soon hungry again. Wants are the constant distractors from our soul’s desires. Wants always lay on the horizon of life. In the distance. As the want – the car, the house, the lover, comes closer, we pluck it up and see that the horizon is ever before us. And what is on the far horizon beckoning? A faster car. A bigger house. A younger lover.
What then? Well back to Aunt Myrtle, figs and purple velvet shoes. Oh didn’t I tell you about the purple velvet shoes? They had straps that could slip down behind the heel and big purple jewels on the front. They also had gold lining. I loved them! I’m sure they were pronounced gaudy and unsuitable. Anyway, I got saddle shoes instead and, at five, had to learn to colour white shoe polish inside the lines with that little dauber thing – all without spilling the whole bottle all over the newspaper – oh yeah, I did. Inevitably there were unsightly smears on the navy bits – testament to my clumsiness. That alone has stunted me in ways I fear to think! In rebelliousness, I would scuff my toes all the way to school! What a terror!
Forgive me, I digress. Back to desires. What are they and how do we know one from a want? Well, desires are yearnings of the soul for expression. Yearnings to connect with others that share similar desires. Even the simplest stroking of a desire has it purring in the heart as contentment. Desires are born of love and thrive in love. Our heart’s desires are Life’s yearning to express itself through our own unique and particular expression of it. We pick up a brush, put it to canvas and feel the colour even as we see it. We hum a tune we’ve never heard before and a song is born. We take off the suit of career and lay back to birth a child. We are released from an illness and devote our life to healing. We step out of the corporate harness and craft our own business. We sail around the world in a boat or on the internet. What we do makes a difference because we do it from love. And the joy of it all? When we act from love we are free!
In expressing our heart’s desires, we draw in the very love of self that has been our nameless longing, forever. As we fill with self love we embody self respect and self esteem. With these qualities we will never harm ourselves or another*. We will grow in confidence, creativity, and reverence for others and the world we live in. We will know peace within because there will be no other voice of authority but Love. That expression might be as an engineer or a dancer, a parent or bank manager. Desires by nature are nurturing and when we fulfill our desires, we nurture through our acts. A desire fulfilled is never wanting, cannot be criticized or judged and is always forever our own. A desire fulfilled is a magnet and attracts more and more to itself until we shine in our own light. A light that can never be dimmed or tarnished. We become alive because we are an expression of Life in its fullest – happiness, peace, beauty, joy, vitality!
Life (big ‘L’ Life) desires to evolve through us. When we sow from the heart. We reap Love.
* In honour of my husband’s birthday, today, I share this lesson of self-love that George embodied and shared with all who knew him.
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