Desires: Avoiding False Goals
Desires are the result of earthly influences, not part of the soul’s true purpose, and are detrimental to an individual’s life plan.
—THE AUTHOR’S CAUSAL GUIDES
Every one of us comes here with a life plan. Yet sticking to it can be hard. That’s why this next door leads to a place where you can learn to balance your very human cravings with your soul’s need for you to stick to your life plan.
Your soul wants you to stay focused on what you came here to do, which means avoiding the many diversions that get in your way. And that takes us through the Door to Balance, to confront something called Desires: false goals that may take you well off your chosen life plan.
Pinocchio’s False Goal
Remember how Pinocchio got sidetracked? All he had to do was get to school. Yet within minutes of leaving home, he was in a bar surrounded by ruffians, smoking a cigar and playing pool.
His goal was school. His desire, his false goal, was Glamour.
Alas, Pinocchio is not alone. We all get sidetracked at some point or another. Some of us spend our entire lives following our desires rather than our missions. The result can be a kind of spiritual stagnation, as our soul finds itself unable to progress in this lifetime.
Desires are rooted in the Physical Plane, not the Soul World, which is why they have no spiritual value. How often have you heard that money doesn’t buy happiness? Don’t we all know that rank and status are ultimately quite meaningless?
But what about education or health? Surely they’re desirable desires? Of course they are. But then, all desires are—in moderation.
The advantage associated with any desire is what your soul really wants, and is achieved by balancing the desire so that it no longer interferes with your life plan. The risk is the unfortunate effect of embracing the desire, and prevents spiritual growth. As we explore each of the ten desires, you’ll see how they can be hypnotic in their appeal, but damaging when they get out of balance.
The Ten Desires
• The desire for Safety
• The desire for Wealth
• The desire for Education
• The desire for Glamour
• The desire for Attraction
• The desire for Status
• The desire for Health
• The desire for Power
• The desire for Fame
• The desire for Immortality
Advantage: Achievement
Risk: Immobilization
Confucius once said, “A ship in the harbor is safe—but that’s not what ships are for.”
A desire for Safety prevents you from achieving all the goals your soul has planned for this lifetime. And, though you may feel comfortable in the safety of your own personal harbor, if you’re going to fulfill your life plan, it’s important to get out into the world and take a few risks.
One of my clients, Hannah, seemed like the least likely candidate for having a desire for Safety. She’d just given up her husband and her home, and was about to fly out, that same week, to New Guinea, where she’d be working for an AIDS charity.
“I spent my entire life searching for safety,” she said. “I married a boring man and took a really dull job, all because I wanted security.”
So, what changed? When her children left home, Hannah (a Level 10 Thinker with a Spiritualist influence and missions of Connection and Change) looked at her life and decided it was not what she wanted. She saw through the Illusion and realized her future was going to be all about helping people less fortunate than herself.
Most of us know what it’s like to be afraid of the unknown. But when it gets out of balance, the desire for Safety can be immobilizing. Instead of taking a chance like Hannah did, many people prefer to cling to the illusion of certainty that this desire offers.
And it is just an illusion. Was Hannah happy with her unexciting life? Absolutely not. It took many years for her to cast aside the risk, immobilization, and launch herself into the uncertain yet exciting advantage of achievement. Her life is now one in which she’s on her way to finding profound fulfillment by living the life her soul intended.
Advantage: Opportunity
Risk: Materialism
This is the most common desire of all. What’s wrong with wanting money? Nothing. We all need it to survive. Problems arise, however, when you want it so much that it takes you off your life plan.
Denise asked me for help in a matter that actually concerned her husband. Several years before, Ron had gone into business with a pair of crooks who’d used his money and credibility to buy rental property in Miami.
Ron had known nothing about real estate, but was lured by the promise of easy money with very little effort. In a complex fraud, his partners took his investment and bilked him out of his share of the business.
With right on his side, Ron had sued his ex-partners. Unfortunately, it hadn’t gone well. The legal process had taken years, cost Ron a fortune, and looked like it would drag on for a long time to come. Worse still, his partners had turned the tables on him. There was a real risk he might actually lose the case. The stress was eating him up.
As I was talking to Denise, I suddenly found myself in the presence of Ron’s father.
“I have Ron’s dad with me,” I said.
“Oh my gosh!” Denise squealed. “Ask him what he thinks. Ron always trusted his advice when his dad was alive.”
The message was clear. “It’s killing him,” Ron’s father said. “Tell him to walk away from it and get back to what’s really important.” (What was important was taking care of his family. One of the lessons Ron was learning was that money doesn’t replace love.)
Denise agreed. “I keep telling him it’ll kill him, but he’s like a man possessed.”
My guides came back in and gave their two cents’ worth. They said that Ron’s desire for Wealth was blinding him to reality. He felt a deep sense of injustice, which was hardly surprising. But it was his desire that had not only led him into this sordid business, but was also keeping him locked in a battle he was unlikely to win.
Happiness is elusive when we’re more focused on making money than following our life plans. Underlying a desire for Wealth is a need for the opportunity that wealth offers. But when the desire gets out of balance, it turns to materialism, the risk, which blocks the path to spirituality.
The Desire for Education
Advantage: Knowledge
Risk: Procrastination
What on earth could possibly be wrong with education? Usually nothing. Most of us don’t get nearly as much as we could use. But sometimes, enough is enough.
While education leads to the advantage, knowledge, an out-of-balance desire for it can function as a distraction; it’s a way to put off actually living the life your soul intended.
You see it in people who become “permanent students,” always going from one course to the next. They’re constantly learning, but never doing anything with it.
In Carrie’s case, the last thing her soul wanted was another year at school.
As the summer neared an end and college loomed on the horizon, she became increasingly miserable. She simply didn’t know whether to go back or not.
The answer wasn’t hard to find. What was ailing this Creator type was the thought of going back to art school to complete her final year rather than seizing some incredible opportunities that had come her way. She sat down opposite me, close to tears.
“I’ve been asked to illustrate a children’s book, some posters, and all sorts of other projects that are coming my way,” she told me. “The problem is I’m only a year away from getting my degree. One part of me feels that I can’t give up now, but the other part dreads going back to school.”
“Your career has already started,” I told her. “What your soul wants now is for you to get on with your life. It doesn’t need another year of college.”
No matter how I asked my spirit guides the question, they saw no advantage to Carrie in going back to school. “If it helps her,” they said, “remind her that she can always finish college sometime in the future.”
That evening, Carrie’s mother, Leslie, called to thank me. “I don’t remember the last time I saw her this happy!” she said.
The next afternoon, however, Leslie called again. “It’s a disaster!” she cried. “Carrie had lunch with the guy who helped her get into college. He’s talked her into going back. Now she’s unhappy and confused again.”
She begged me to meet up with Carrie and convince her not to go. I explained that it’s not my job to convince anyone of anything, but she was insistent.
So that evening, I met Carrie again for a chat. I told her the same thing I’d told her mom. “The answer from my spirit guides isn’t going to change in a day,” I explained. “You’re being guided not to go back to school, but ultimately it’s your choice. Listen to your own intuition, and don’t make your decision based on my guides’ or anyone else’s opinion.”
As we spoke, Carrie broke into a smile. “I think I know what I have to do,” she said.
It’s been six months, and Carrie is working as a professional illustrator. The last time I saw her, I asked her how it was all working out. “I’ve just moved into a studio, and work keeps coming in,” she said. “My life has never been better.”
The Desire for Glamour
Advantage: Stimulation
Risk: Jadedness
When I had my first session with Heather, I told her she was just about to meet someone called Isabella. A day later, that’s exactly what happened—though not quite in the way she expected. Isabella turned out to be a six-foot-six transvestite she ran into at a party.
After a trip to Burning Man, the annual festival held in the Black Rock Desert, Heather had thrown herself into its associated party scene.
“I’ve always been a rebel,” she told me. “I was looking for an alternative lifestyle, and I found it through Burning Man.”
Weekends became a blur of glamorous parties. “I’d stay awake for days, partying the whole time.”
Then Heather started dating a guy who was doing heavy-duty drugs. “I loved acid,” she said. “I’d always found it very alluring. And I’d started doing a lot of coke. But it all took an ugly turn when I met Gary. I got into crystal meth—real evil stuff. I realized I was losing control of my life.”
One night, Gary was at the wheel of Heather’s car when they skidded off the road and hit a tree. “We were high on crack, so we ran off as fast as we could. After that, I started to see the destruction around me, and what the drugs were doing to me. It wasn’t fun anymore. I’d developed a real hard edge, and I’d started to lose my friends.”
Heather’s desire for Glamour had reached the point where the stimulation her fast lifestyle had once offered had turned into habit. And that was the point where her awareness allowed her soul to finally make its own desire felt.
It took her several years, but she finally put her destructive past behind her and found the alternative lifestyle she really needed: she moved from the city to a small town where she grows organic vegetables with her long-term boyfriend, a man almost thirty years younger than she is.
The Desire for Attraction
Advantage: Acceptance
Risk: Superficiality
Heather’s not alone when it comes to her penchant for younger men. Celia has had a string of boyfriends half her age. What both these women have in common is a desire for Attraction: a fear of losing their youth and sexuality.
When I first met Celia, it was clear that what she really yearned for was someone she could spend the rest of her life with. Yet on the surface, she gave the appearance of wanting something else. From the way she dressed, spoke, and behaved, settling down seemed to be the last thing she wanted.
Celia has a number of fears. At the top of the list is a fear of aging. “I worry all the time about growing old and not being wanted,” she confessed.
At an early age, girls in particular learn to use their sexuality to give themselves power. As they grow up, many place an exaggerated importance on physical looks and youth. Then, when they see signs of aging (Celia joked about applying her makeup with a trowel), a panic sets in. They assume that their desirability is entirely tied up with their appearance.
When she was younger, Celia worked as a waitress and bartender. Now she spends her evenings trying to hold onto her youth by hanging out in all her old haunts.
But by dressing like a teenager and getting wasted every night, she’s sending out a mixed message. Her behavior is actually getting in the way of her real goal: finding a life partner.
Many people who have grown up unloved, or whose self-esteem is low, will use the desire for Attraction to be accepted. An unfortunate result of this desire is superficiality, forgetting that who they are goes way beyond their Physical Plane self.
The Desire for Status
Advantage: Respect
Risk: Self-Importance
There is an old Italian proverb that says, “At the end of the game, all the pieces go back in the same box.”
It’s a reminder that status is, in a spiritual sense, quite meaningless. It’s only on this plane that it actually matters. You may be a VIP here on earth, but when you review your life on the Astral Plane, no one—least of all your soul—is going to care about the letters after your name, the rank you held, or which rung of the social ladder you ended up on.
The Desire for Status
The Buddha put it well when he said: “So what of all these titles, names, and races? They are mere worldly conventions.”
Most people who actively seek out status do so because they want others to respect them. Unfortunately, they can’t force people to look up to them. What they’re most likely to end up with is simply an elevated sense of self-importance.
The way people with this desire can best achieve the advantage is to exercise their authority with integrity.
The Desire for Health
Advantage: Fitness
Risks: Hypochondria
What’s wrong with being healthy? Nothing, of course—just as long as you retain a sense of perspective.
Audrey lost hers when she started working out at the gym in the basement of her Los Angeles apartment building. After a while, she started getting up earlier and earlier to fit in more running time before work. Soon she was spending her lunch hour at the gym, then running in the park after work. After dinner, she’d work out some more.
“It made me feel really alive. I began thinking of nothing else. I’d run through the mall where I could see myself reflected in the shop windows. It was an obsession. I became totally narcissistic,” she said.
During that period, which lasted several years, Audrey became obsessed with her body. She was convinced that every little ache or pain was the sign of something much worse. She lost so much weight on a diet that she became sick.
Then she broke her ankle when she fell off a sidewalk, and the injury forced her to take a break. Soon she became seriously ill. During her convalescence, she saw how far over the top she’d gone. When she recovered she worked on getting her desire for Health into balance with the rest of her life.
If your desire is Health, the advantage, fitness, is your soul’s goal. As for the risk, if you’ve ever known a hypochondriac, you’ll have seen what happens when an interest in the physical body and its functions get out of balance.
The Desire for Power
Advantage: Confidence
Risk: Arrogance
The desire for Power may look like a mission of Control, but there is one significant difference: the desire for Power is only ever seen in those who are fundamentally insecure about themselves. In an attempt to build confidence, they frequently use their power for selfish ends.
As world leaders, they’ll attack other countries; as judges, they’ll impose cruel and harsh sentences on those who are powerless. As parents or spouses, they’ll rule through coercion and terror.
Sometimes an individual with a desire for Power will deliberately manipulate a situation to provoke a reaction. (It allows them to justify exerting their power.) Once they’ve initiated a response, they’ll take stern measures, all of which are designed to make themselves look tough. They’ll fire an entire workforce, invade another country, or use the courts as a weapon.
What their soul wants them to achieve is the advantage, confidence, and the ability to use a position of authority with responsibility. The risk is arrogance. From a distance, it may look like confidence, but it lacks spiritual substance.
Advantage: Recognition
Risk: Transience
“I had my fifteen minutes of fame almost twenty years ago,” Ursula told me. “It taught me a lesson I’ll never forget.”
It began with a talent show in her Midwest home town. Ursula had always dreamed of becoming famous. As a fourteen-year-old Performer type, she fantasized about strangers recognizing her, adoring fans asking for her autograph, and seeing herself on the front cover of magazines.
This was her big chance. She entered the talent contest performing a cover of a popular comic song.
“I was a hit!” she said. “People recognized me on the street. I had my picture in the papers. And it went to my head. From the way I acted, you’d have thought I was a Hollywood star!”
Over the next few weeks, Ursula played a few more concerts. She even did a spot on a local radio station. And that was it. Her brand new career came to a complete halt.
“By the time I was fifteen, I was a has-been,” she joked. “I thought my next stop was the Johnny Carson show. It wasn’t. It was back to school.”
Ursula’s story illustrates the point that it’s those who deliberately seek out fame who have the least chance of a) finding it, or b) keeping it.
Fame is fickle—especially for those whose talent or ability fails to support their desire. It offers the reward of recognition, which many people, particularly Performers, crave. But its effect is transient. Not only is the public unpredictable, but the inherent worthlessness of fame becomes apparent as soon as the initial buzz wears off.
Just ask Ursula. “Once I realized how shallow fame really was, I began concentrating on my first love: playing the piano. Over the years I’ve had far more media attention doing that than I ever had from my silly songs. And I don’t even have to try. I learned a powerful lesson back then. It’s taught me to see fame for what it is, and not let it take me away from what I love doing.”
The Desire for Immortality
Advantage: Achievement
Risk: Mortality
The idea that life continues after death can be a hard one to accept—especially for those who are caught up in the Illusion. Since they believe that life is a one-shot deal, they place great importance on leaving a lasting legacy.
“Remember Me When I’m Gone”
The desire for Immortality lies behind the need certain individuals have to write a book, make a record, achieve an Olympic gold medal, or even commit serial murder. (That’s not to suggest, of course, that everyone who—ahem—writes a book does it for that reason.)
The positive benefit of a desire for Immortality is that it pushes people to achieve things they might not otherwise have done. Like fame, however, immortality is rarely achieved by those who actively seek it out. Just because you set out to write the great American novel doesn’t mean you actually will. (The public will decide whether or not your novel is great.)
The desire for Immortality is most visible in powerful Level 5 leaders, since so many of them are unable to escape the Illusion, and as such believe that life is a one-shot deal. They raise monuments to themselves to trumpet their importance and ensure they won’t be forgotten. In the past, pyramids, palaces, and statues were the preferred choice. These days, it’s more likely to be a skyscraper or a sports stadium bearing the name of its wealthy founder.
Immortality is much more likely to come as a side effect of doing what you do best. The long-term impact you make is subject to the whims of fashion. And, of course, any concern you might have about immortality ends with your physical death.
Balancing Your Desires
Something all desires have in common is that the harder you try to achieve them, the more they’ll elude you.
Desires are unfulfilling and often intangible. The object of the desire may never actually be reached. A desire for Education, for example, has no end. How do you know when you’ve got enough? Or take Glamour. What does too much look like?
The secret to overcoming desires is not to destroy them, but to master them. The way to do that is to achieve balance, so you control your desires—not the other way around.
Enter into a meditative state, and call in your spirit guides. Ask them to help you identify your desire. Use the following list as a reminder.
The desire for Safety: The need for stability or certainty
The desire for Wealth: An obsession with accumulating money
The desire for Education: Accumulating knowledge without purpose
The desire for Glamour: Wanting a life that’s out of the ordinary
The desire for Attraction: An obsession with youth or physical appearance
The desire for Status: Wanting others to look up to you
The desire for Health: Being fixated with your physical body
The desire for Power: The need to have control over others
The desire for Fame: Craving recognition
The desire for Immortality: Wishing to be remembered after your death
Desires for:_________________________________________
Once you’ve identified your desire or desires, here’s a way to achieve balance and ensure that they keep themselves in proportion and don’t get in the way of your life plan.
Once again, enter a meditative state and call in your spirit guides. Ask them to support you in balancing your desire. Repeat the following:
“I call upon my spirit guides, acting in my highest interest, to help me balance my desire for ___________________________ and allow me to live the life my soul intended.”
When you’ve finished, thank your spirit guides and tell them, “Session over.” Do this once a day until you feel your desire is no longer interfering negatively in your life.
Your soul wants you to create equilibrium between your physical self and your spiritual self. Glamour, for instance, doesn’t exist in the Soul World. It can only be experienced here. That’s why it’s something your soul is eager to explore.
Your soul doesn’t want to take away the fun things in life. It just wants to make sure you don’t overindulge.
When Heather adopted a healthier lifestyle, did she put her desire for Glamour behind her? The answer is no. What she did was to get it to a place where it no longer ruled her life. She told me she still enjoys getting dressed up and sipping fancy cocktails with the girls. In fact, now that she’s got her desire in perspective, she finds it more enjoyable than ever.
And, without the old distractions, she’s able to live her life with conviction—knowing the difference between what’s important and what’s simply a false goal.
• • •
Now that we’ve explored one of the major distractions on the journey to enlightenment, it’s time to walk through the Door to Transformation and discover how to overcome some of the biggest stumbling blocks you’re going to encounter on the road ahead.