When You Can No Longer Tell What You Truly Want
Cuando ya no puedes distinguir lo que verdaderamente deseas
A student expresses confusion about whether her desires are authentic or merely serving a self-image, and the teacher explores how to recognize genuine calling through vitality and honest inquiry.
When You Can No Longer Tell What You Truly Want
A student expresses confusion about whether her desires are authentic or merely serving a self-image, and the teacher explores how to recognize genuine calling through vitality and honest inquiry.
I don't trust my interpretations of those things anymore. Am I doing it to uphold what my image of myself is, or is that something I truly, truly want? I can't tell the difference anymore.
That's good. That's good, because you're starting to question what wasn't very real. You're now in a state of confusion, and that's the only place from which we can look more deeply, where something new, fresh, and more real can appear.
Recognizing what is true
You're going to recognize it by noticing where there is a sense of expansion, vitality, and energy, even if it bubbles up for only three seconds. When it's based on the conditioning of these images from the past, it feels dry, lacking energy, perhaps even a little depressive.
How do you know your true calling?
Where there is vitality, energy, expansiveness. If there is none, it's not true. And if you say, "Well, there's no energy," then how is it that you're breathing?
What happens is we get blocked. There's pain, frustration, fears. And then parenthood can be a big distraction. It is a priority to be a mother, but if in that process there is an abandoning of our own development, then we become a suboptimal parent. Part of being a parent is leading by example: showing how to develop and be our most developed self possible.
It becomes an even more complicated mirror house to avoid my discomforts.
Yes. Discomforts, fears, insecurities, pains, frustrations.
Going into it just makes it even more complicated to find those moments of vitality and expansion that are truly mine.
The simplicity of honest inquiry
Maybe, maybe not. It's not that difficult. It's just a really honest, open wondering: what do I truly want? Just assume that you'll be the best mother you can be, that your child will develop in the best way he can. Put that aside while you contemplate: what do you truly want? You're not just a mother. You were something, someone, before.
Yes, thank you.
I admire your courage. You're doing very unusual work. Very few people do what you're doing.
Thank you for holding the space for this.
My pleasure.