Will We Get What We Want?

4.18.05

I don't know. We'll just have to wait and see, won't we?

Still, for those who answered my call to put out what we want, the power of pushing past our inhibitions to articulate our desires, not leaving them marooned in abstraction in the whirlpools of our heads, but writing them and speaking them and sharing them with each other… this first-step appeal to making them real continues to resonate potently in my life, and hopefully in all of yours.

Among the many email responses, I received more than one reply from readers challenging me on the productiveness of 'wanting' something. The very act of wanting, after all, implies a lack, a self-conception of being incomplete or not enough as we currently are… and this runs counter to the spiritually healing notion that everything is as it should be and we are always already whole. Furthermore, according to this view, wanting adds virtually no creative boost to our ability to actualize the wants.

One reader (hi, Anita!) went to great lengths in poignantly explaining her perspective on the power of our words, including a passage from Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations with God, which I'm requoting here because of its wisdom:

Think of it this way. The word 'I' is the key that starts the engine of creation. The words 'I am' are extremely powerful. They are statements to the universe. Commands. Now, whatever follows the word 'I' (which calls forth the Great I Am) tends to manifest in physical reality.

Therefore 'I' + 'want success' produces you wanting success. 'I' + 'want money' must produce you wanting money. It can produce no other thing, because thoughts, words are creative. Actions are, too. And if you act in a way which says that you want success and money, then your thoughts, words and actions are in accord, and you are sure to have the experience of this wantingness.

Thus, by this logic, we must be more 'will'-ful with our words to truly manifest our intended reality. That is: I will increase my website traffic tenfold. I will earn enough money through my writing and my astrology practice to ease financial worries. I will continue to grow physically healthier and stronger.

It's not as if I wasn't aware of these ideas before. Admittedly, I even tried to sidestep them by being glib, claiming my unpreparedness for renouncing attachment to my wants… at the same time knowing that non-attachment (or detachment) to particular outcomes, material or otherwise, is an essential element of creative manifestation. We must state our intentions, and then let them go. After the magic candle burns out, we dump the empty glass and walk away.

But I, like (presumably) all of you, am a work-in-spiritual-progress. I haven't yet mastered the reliable self-trust to declare what will happen and then stand back so the rabbits can hop out my hat and the doves fly from my sleeves. Sometimes it happens that way, and sometimes not. Often, though, I'm still at the want stage. And I'm thinking it's where I need to be.

In my opinion, it's not useful to skip ahead in the process of self-discovery, to rush valiantly toward freedom from attachments without first working to understand what we might be attaching ourselves to. It's like trying to get a handle on alcoholism before you've admitted you have a problem. How can we stop acting like a desperate adolescent when we aren't even aware of our own repressed crush on that hottie at work?

Only once we know what we want can we make conscious choices to move toward it or away from it through our actions. Keep drinking or don't. Pursue the hottie by making the lust known, or finesse the urge toward platonic friendship. And once we make conscious choices in particular directions and witness our will actively and successfully sculpting reality, we cultivate greater faith in our actions. Knowing we're doing our best, we can actually let go of attachment to outcomes and stay enjoyable centered in their mysterious unfolding.

For now, we are still under the influence of eclipse-period transition… and likely still under the influence of want. This Sunday, April 24, marks the second of the two eclipses, the full-moon lunar version in the sign of Scorpio. At the lunar eclipse, we stare a profound awareness of previously shadowed issues in the face; they crawl out from the dark and glare at us under the extra-intense full-moon light.

If we graft the Aries-to-Pisces zodiac onto the progression of desire, from immediate actions toward personal want (Aries) to spiritually pure, ego-free surrender (Pisces), Scorpio falls somewhere in the neighborhood of 'he has what I want'… it represents the difficult complex of emotions involved in processing inequity, as well the psychological negotiations (including, possibly, manipulation) required to foster an exchange.

In light of our recent dialogue with our wants, the lunar eclipse in Scorpio shows us the underbelly of how we feel about what we don't have. It's an awareness important to the process of understanding why we want what we want, and how far we'll go to get it—even when we know we shouldn't.

In a lunchtime conversation on this topic, a friend (hi, Renee!) agreed with me that there's nothing inherently corrupt about desire, though it always inextricably fashions a gap between the object of that desire and the reality of our current lack of that object. It's how we relate to that gap which possesses the potential to be more or less spiritually healthy for us. Do we yearn and envy and ache, full of bile, or do we acknowledge and act, unattached?

Here's where Chiron in Aquarius comes in, making a T-square to the lunar eclipse's Sun-Moon opposition and promising us a chance to heal the suffering associated with desire… if we agree to dismantle any walls (e.g., good/bad, self/other) we've constructed in the gap.

If we as humans view ourselves as one giant body comprised of billions of cells, rather than billions of existentially isolated units of no relation, then this single colossal 'I' always already has everything it could ever want. Fulfilling desire seems merely a matter of transporting nutrients to where they're most needed. We simply send the electrical-impulse messages to the proper organ or appendage, and expect the right response. Of course, whenever one or more cells behave in a manner detrimental to the well-being of the whole, the body considers them cancerous, and we can't expect them to receive their desired return. The toxic fragments must instead be fought off with loving health, digested and absorbed, or they will kill the rest of us. What we want must be good for the whole, or the flow is corrupt.

As always, I welcome your feedback.