The Desire Map

Knowing how you actually want to feel is the most potent form of clarity that you can have.

She was having a hard time managing her feelings at this point, mostly because she hadn't felt them in so long-they confused her... After you've been numbed for a while, disorientation is a natural reaction as you come back around. It's like waking up from anesthesia and not knowing exactly where you are.

When we want to feel courageous more than we want to check accomplishments off our list … When we want to feel free more than we want to please other people … When we want to feel good more than we want to look good … then we’ve got our priorities in order. Divine priorities—the kind that will steer you to the life you long for most deeply.

You can’t always choose what happens to you, but you can always choose how you feel about it.

Desire is a teacher: When we immerse ourselves in it without guilt, shame or clinging, it can show us something special about our own minds that allows us to embrace life fully. —Mark Epstein, Open to Desire

Awareness is realizing that our life could always be better. Growth is doing what it takes to make it better. When we choose the positive over the negative, liberation over repression, truth over illusion, we become real creators.

Your life is your art. When you make tough choices in favor of your Soul, you’re making a masterpiece out of your existence.

Affirmations are like screaming that you’re okay in order to overcome this whisper that you’re not.

THE ESSENCE OF YOUR DESIRE IS A FEELING

The surest sign that you’re working with the life-affirming kind of discipline, rather than the spirit-depressing kind, is that you don’t complain very much about doing what it takes.

Just like an ocean can be pounding the beach with waves yet be perfectly calm at its depths, our feelings may look destructive, or inappropriate, or negative, when really they are expressions of something incredibly hopeful coming from deep within us. So, on some days, an angry outburst might really be a wave of creative energy coursing through you. Fight for your rights! Or that tremor of grief could be the stirring of your most tender compassion. What looks like fear might actually be excitement.

epidemically often, we go for the external win at the cost of our internal wellness.

Your Soul is everything. The “Am That I Am.” Your beingness. The you that is simultaneously part of the all. The God that is aware of itself. Unfathomably, your Soul is the stuff of eternity, time without end, spanning space and dimensions. It is the Love of All Loves. It is the inextinguishable Source of Light. Your Soul is home.

Sometimes even feeling bad feels good. Negative emotions can feel so familiar to us (especially if they mimic our past) as to actually be comforting. Awareness is realizing that our life could always be better. Growth is doing what it takes to make it better. When we choose the positive over the negative, liberation over repression, truth over illusion, we become real creators.

I ONLY WANT TO HIT MY TARGETS IF THE AIMING AND THE HITTING BOTH FEEL GOOD.

Sometimes it reminds me that the most loving act can be to just let it go.

I want to feel good more than I want to check accomplishments off my list.

In real time where I’m at, it’s raining on my skylight and I can hear the washing machine spinning. I’m wearing my favorite mocha sweater, leggings, and moccasins. I plan to be here at my keyboard until dark. And as sure as I am that it’s raining, that there are moccasins on my feet, and that you’re breathing in and out as you read these words, I am sure that you are worthy of having what you want.

Emotional intentionality is not about manipulating the actors in your play to create the right scene. It is about improvising and getting in the right frame of mind regardless of how other people are appearing on your stage.

But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure, then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor, into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears. —Khalil Gibran

Desire is the engine of creation.

You can’t always choose what happens to you, but you can always choose how you feel about it

No te lo tomes como algo personal. Controla tus sentimientos. No vayas con el corazón en la mano. No te impliques sentimentalmente. No seas tan sensible. No permitas que te controlen tus sentimientos. No importa cómo te sientas sobre ello, es así.

Self-editing is enpowering.

I desire to write, be wildly in love, support my son to be who he is, keep my hair thick and shiny, get more tattoos, recite mantras, speak onstage, sleep in linen sheets, drive alone in the wide open spaces of New Mexico for hours, be flexible and productive, be alone at parties, be alone at home, be alone, be liked-loved-respected, keep a temple-tidy house, drive a reliable car, make millions of dollars and give lots away, meditate, get caught in thunderstorms, dance long and hard, wear cashmere, make things that make people want to make things of their own, sleep in, recycle, be One, seek approval, go to weddings (and funerals), order in, worship Rothko paintings, call my grandmother, free spiders, go back to India, stay up too late, get just the right font spacing, listen to Tibetan singing bowls on repeat for hours, watch three documentaries in a row, give all I have to give at any given moment to pretty much anybody, wear perfume every day of the week, shave my head, burn everything I’ve ever written, give insight, give money, give time, find my True Nature, and touch the face of God … Why do I desire what I desire? The answer is fast, clear, and simple: to feel good, of course.

We wrote out a bunch of positive feelings, and then we asked ourselves, “So what can we do to feel that way?” In that simple question lay a new way of living life, which subtly and slowly led to profound changes in the way I went about getting things done.