What do you really, really want?

I am sitting to write this article for readers to see in early January and I am aware that it is the season of the New Year's Resolution. 

What goes on the list of New Year's Resolutions is usually something like this:

• Lose weight
• Eat healthier
• Get up early to exercise daily
• Drink less alcohol
• Drink more water
• Work harder/ work shorter hours
• Read more
• Get a new job 

The things that go on the resolutions list are usually to fix something we perceive is wrong with us. Last month I wrote about limiting beliefs and those veils of limitation. Here we have them in action again.  Limited perfection. Limited space. Limited time. Limited action. Limited knowing.

Remember though that they can always be lifted to reveal what is your True Nature.

What is it that you really, really want?

It is surprising how unconscious this can really be, but if we can flush it out into the open, many "desires" such as are reflected in the resolutions list, become superfluous. Be like a little child and keep asking the question why.

Let's imagine that your immediate answer to the question, what do you really want, is to have enough money to retire on right now. Let's have an imagined dialogue about that.

Why do you want that?

My job sucks.

Why?

I have to work really hard, but it doesn't pay very well and my boss is really bossy and seems to think she owns me, wants me there when it should be my own time .....

Well we opened a flood gate there, but what if we ask again. What do you really want?

Not to be in that job, to feel valued.

To feel valued. Could we take a look at that? You do not feel valued?

No, I feel unloved and unvalued, worthless, when I go to this job and am treated like I am treated.

So what do you really want?

To feel valued and appreciated.

So how would it feel if you were valued and appreciated? If you are valued and appreciated right now what feelings would be there in your body?

I would feel warm inside, and my edges would be soft and inviting. I would feel whole.

So would it be correct to say that what you really want is to feel whole?

You can do this with yourself. Take what first arises in answer to the question, "What do you really want?" and then workshop it just as I have in this imagined conversation above.

In traditional yoga nidra the practice starts with the Sankalpa, or resolve. In iRest® Yoga Nidra the Sankalpa is divided into three parts, the Intention, the Heartfelt Desire and the Inner Resource. I have noticed that many people take some time to arrive at their Heartfelt desire (or Life Mission, deep driving desire, Heartfelt purpose, what words you call it doesn't matter).

This questioning of what arises can be quite a useful way to open the process of discovery of what it really is. Another lies in what happens at the end of the practice when we invite the Heartfelt desire to arise again.

During the iRest Yoga Nidra meditation we open to the state of awareness in which everything arises and begin to experience our True Nature as open, welcoming, all-pervasive awareness. At the end of the yoga nidra practice it is directly from that state of pure Awareness that the Heartfelt Desire comes to us, and if we can notice it before the thinking mind begins to edit it, we will see it for what it is.

Sorry for the Spice Girls echoes in the title of today's post.