I meant to do something a year ago. I made careful plans for it, stacked up my dates and times, and set out to get it done. But it never happened (at least until now). Like all things that haven’t gone my way, the delay was perfectly timed.
The thing I was supposed to do a year ago was launch this online group program that had been burning a hole in my pocket. In August 2019 I mapped out exactly how my fall, winter, and spring would go. I would balance my online work with my beloved clients, launch three online programs, and support the opening of a healing center in Merida, Mexico with my husband.
I followed that plan all the way to September. Suddenly I found myself in a whirlpool of launching the center, hosting visiting clients, figuring out how to run a business in a country whose laws who I not know, finding myself running another Ayurvedic food service business after swearing them off, coping with eight weeks of my daughter’s heart-wrenching cough and debilitating fever (yes, I think it was COVID before we knew what that was), suffering in the heat of the jungle much more than I had expected, and watching my relationship with my husband nearly splinter from the weight of blowing up our lives and remaking them for the umpteenth time in the past six years only to remember how deeply in love we are and blow up our life and remake it again by moving to British Columbia.
Our plans look so cute in hindsight, don’t they?
How to get what you want
It’s vital to our emotional and physical health to routinely and ritualistically voice our desires. This is the only way we can grow hungry enough to start cooking. BUT — just because we want something doesn’t mean we get it. Sometimes we do get it, but it’s almost never in the timing or delivery that we had expected. Whether we get our desire or don’t, trust this: Each imperfect package was divinely wrapped.
Divine intervention can feel like a buzzkill to the ego, but that doesn’t mean that we stop making plans. In fact, I am writing this after having outlined my new online program (I’ll give you a hint because I think it’s really delicious: it’s a way to process your relationship with your body through journaling and Ayurveda). We listen to our desires, voice them, work to bring them to life, and then recognize them like old friends when they arrive in inexplicable ways.
If a desire comes alive, rejoice. If a desire wilts and dies, mourn it. But know that nothing at the core of you — that dust of the Divine within — will ever change as a result of what you receive or give away. Despite your successes and failures, you remain a gift from Source forever and always.
Life is a dance between three partners: your body, your purpose, and your actions. But the Divine is playing the music. Put in your song requests and then listen carefully — She will add Her own artistic grace. What results is a creation far more worthy of your dance than your mind could have ever imagined.
Journaling Prompt (and a Desire Practice)
The power of journaling is that it allows us to make sense of the jumbled noise in our heads. It is like tuning a radio to find out what you are really asking for. Find a quiet space and set a timer for 15 minutes to work on any of these prompts.
-
Write down 30 of your deepest desires — what do you want out of life so bad you can taste it? Leave nothing out, from relationships, to career, travel, health, creative expression. Put the list in a special place — your bra, your altar, the moonlight. Every so often, pull the list out and read through what you wrote. You’ll find that many of your desires have been answered in their own special way.
-
Write about a time you were really hungry for something in your life. If your desire was realized, what happened? If it was not, what did you learn?
-
Where does desire live in your body? What kinds of sensations come when you get what you want? What kinds of sensations come when you don’t get it in the way you thought you would?
