Sometimes we are deeply connected with our feelings, needs, and desires, and sometimes we prevent ourselves from being connected with our feelings, needs and desires. And sometimes the two can look quite similar.
Desires. How do you feel when you hear this word? I reckon many of us think of sexual desires. But how about widening desires to be any callings from the soul ~ things that we long to have ~ things that bring a song to our heart.
Disconnections. When we are repressing our true feelings, needs and desires. We have learnt patterns of behaviour that we crave, that we want, that we do repetitively, that seem to be full of promise and joy, and yet never seem to quite give what we are looking for.
How do we differentiate between these two?
How do we know when something that we really want, that we think about, that we long for, is a desire of our heart that will bring us more self-connection, or a pulling into something that will take us further away from ourselves?
And how do we distinguish between these two in our babies and children and partners and friends? How do we know when something they long for, ask for, want, is a true desire of their soul, or a pattern that will lead to them feeling spaced out and disconnected from themselves and from us?
It seems to me that the more we know the difference for ourselves, the more awareness we will have about which is going on for them.
Let’s look at each of these.
Desires…. following our heart’s longing….. in order to do this, we need to move beyond our internalised ‘should’, ‘can’t’, ‘have to’ and ‘naughty’…… we need to be willing to truly listen to ourselves and believe that following our inner promptings brings joy to ourselves and means that we have more to offer others and the world. With this in place, we can listen to our desires.
Let me think of a recent example for myself. One afternoon a couple of years ago, my children were happily ensconced in doing their own thing. I had lots of things that I could have told myself I ‘should’ be doing, including paying for car insurance, writing emails, putting in my homeschooling registration, etc. However, I just really didn’t want to. I sat with the pull between the ‘should’ and what I really wanted to do in the moment… the desire… which was to read a novel that I had just got out of the library……. So, I did what was really alive in me, and started reading the novel. I loved it!
I woke up the next morning with a huge burst of energy and aliveness to do lots of those things that I really hadn’t wanted to do the day before. I did several of them, with ease and speed and flow. And although the novel was what I might call ‘trashy’, there were some clear lessons and learnings that applied directly to my life and the direction it was taking, and this had repercussions for the things I was choosing to do. In other words, there are gifts and teachings in all kinds of places, especially surprising ones!
I loved how choosing to go with my desire actually helped me to do the other things more efficiently, easily and effectively than I imagined I would have had I forced myself to do them the afternoon before.
When I follow a desire, I feel a sense of energy, of aliveness, of connection with myself.
In contrast, when I follow something that turns out to be a ‘control pattern’, I feel a sense of flatness, less aliveness, and less connection with myself.
For example, the other day I felt an urge to buy chocolate. I bought some, and ate the whole packet. However, there was little sense of enjoyment or savouring it. I didn’t even really enjoy it whilst I was eating it ~ and yet I ate it all! Afterwards I felt flat and dissatisfied, empty rather than full.
This is the essence of the difference between a desire and a control pattern.
A desire filled leads to a sense of fullness, a sense of enough, a sense of having and being enough.
A control pattern followed leads to a sense of emptiness, a sense of not-enough, a sense of wanting more. There is a paradox here, though.
We may find, when we do something that really is following a desire, that we feel uncomfortable feelings. This may be because we have beliefs that having what we love, or other core beliefs against desire, pleasure and fulfilment.
This is very common, since we live in a culture where desire is seen as unimportant, and doing what we ‘should’ do and going against what is true for us are prevailing expectations. For women, this is particularly strong. For many many generations, most women have passed on beliefs to the next generation to the line of, “If I do what I want and meet my needs, my family will suffer.” It is only in recent times that there have been other possibilities – developments in technology, culture, family set-ups, and the roles of women mean that these beliefs have become very past their sell-by date.
I talk to many women still suffering under the weight of these beliefs. Overwhelmed, frustrated, blaming, angry, resentful. Desperately longing for more joy, pleasure, connection, fun, and depth to their lives, yet not realising that some of what is causing the unpleasantness are long-held beliefs about the dangerousness of connecting to what we want, let alone being willing to have it.
Another paradox is that a control pattern has a kernel of truth and desire at it’s heart. So that, if we truly listen to ourselves when we just ‘have to’ have that piece of chocolate cake, and sink into the truth of what we are longing for at it’s centre, we may find that we want more sweetness in our lives, or more adventure, or excitement. Translating the desire at the core of a control patterns is a first step to being willing to state our desires and go for what we really want.
The more we learn to distinguish between a desire and a control pattern, and to discern the longing at the kernel of a control pattern, the more we know what we want in life. This gives us more clarity and more self-connection with our truth.
The more we know this in ourselves, the more we can distinguish between the wants and control patterns of our children. When we are confident of this knowledge in ourselves, we can trust that supporting them in following their unique wants brings them closer to their true selves; and setting loving limits when what they want is a control pattern which would otherwise take them further from themselves.
Thus, the more connected we are with our true desires, the more we can see and support those in our children.
This is all part of a developmental process, whereby we come to find the source of our fulfilment in ourselves and in the lives we already have. By trusting the directions that our entirely personal and unique loves take us in, we increasingly feel the wholeness that we already, and always, are.