Transformational Arts College of Spiritual and Holistic Training

Much continues to be written today about prosperity, manifesting and our deserving to have whatever we want. The sentiment is bang on; we do deserve to have a full and wonderful life. However getting what we want is much more complicated that simply deciding this is what I want and believing that it will manifest into your life. It is complicated because the energetic laws of attraction are occurring on a number of different levels inside and outside of our body.

To understand and work with this premise, one needs to have a belief system that holds that things occur in our life for a reason. All things: both good and bad. That there is a part of us that actually understands why we are on the planet in a physical body and that this part of us, our soul or Higher Self, gently guides us toward what is best for us at a deep soul level. Having said this, it may now appear why having what we want requires us to be in touch at many levels of our self in order to attract what we want.

The Ego

First of all, we all have an ego. It is a necessary component of the human personality. It has all of our wondrous qualities but it also houses our less desirable traits as well. The human personality is a finely crafted set of emotional and intellectual qualities that is, however, subject to external influences that begin to mold and shape our view of the world and of who we may be from childhood onward. From this place we develop a set of beliefs that influence and filter every interaction, thought and feeling we may have. This is always the place we will concentrate on when we do inner work.

The influence of the ego can be extreme for many people. Our ego may believe that our basic human needs are much bigger that they really are. Our need for love, for food and warmth, money, companionship and recognition become distorted so that our needs now become needy. In other words, the desire to meet our needs is driven by a have to have mentality so that we will be comfortable with our self. Any awareness that we are missing any of these things will increase our level of anxiety causing us to be more aggressive in seeking out what we believe should be ours. An endless cycle of having our needs met in the moment ensues.

Our ego will convince us that we have to have that car, house, person, job or quantity of money in order to be fulfilled and whole. If you notice here, while the list is far from complete, all of the things we may be chasing are external to our self. So our ego is concerned not just with meeting our needs but how having these things in our life will make us appear to others. In our materialistic world, we can falsely believe that the more things we have, the more perfect we appear at all levels, the more desirable we will be perceived to be.

Fear

The biggest underlying experience we have from the wounded aspects of the ego is fear. The fear that we will not have our needs met and therefore will somehow be deemed to be deficient. So fear becomes the driving force at levels we probably are not in touch with. So we go after the big job with the big money and the fancy title believing that when we get the job we will have made it. The sad part is the ego fear is such that we will only be satisfied for awhile and then we will again be driven to get more of something else to be okay. An endless pursuit of having to meet needs which remain unconscious and yet drive our internal and external experiences.

Even when we are in touch with what it is we really do want to go after in our life, fear will pop up and convince us otherwise. Fear does not like change; it is very invested in the status quo. It will convince us that what we want is unattainable or too much work. Fear is the two faced mask which trips us at every corner. On the one side it is driving us to be or do things in order to somehow prove we are okay. In the next breath, as we go after those things, fear will tell us not to, for any number of reasons. Fear keeps us stuck in not having or being enough in this world. It uses clever emotional responses like anxiety and panic to really get its point across. Fear has become our primary motivating force but it will bring us to a crashing halt just as easily.

The Higher Self

Into this arena of what appears to be an insane inner war, we welcome the Higher Self. It attempts to guide us toward what is best for our life. Our higher self sits outside of our emotional beingness and as such is not subject to our ego's limitations and beliefs. Our Higher Self knows what would be best for us but allows us to choose whether to listen to it or not. It is the vehicle of our soul and it can and will negotiate through our many internal dialogues in order to help us. Most do not listen. The inner voice, the intuitive feeling or the gut reaction, all ways our Higher Self attempts to communicate, are usually negated by our minds chatter and the drive to get what we what. We may be presented with all kinds of obstacles and red flags in our pursuit to have what we want but we will ignore and push through these signs because we want this, now. Just because we think we must have something in our life does not mean it is good for us or meant to be.

Even if we override our inner voice of wisdom and go for the gusto, we haven't done anything wrong. What we have done is set up a bumpy ride for ourselves. We will go through the event, relationship etc. and hopefully learn some valuable things about our self, it has not been wasted. It is only a waste when we do not learn anything and keep repeating destructive patterns and attractions over and over again. There are many ways to learn the lessons each one of us have agreed to learn. Life can flow or it can feel like an obstacle course. Our Higher Self is there to guide us gently from the inside, to learn what we need to learn without major drama ensuing en route.

To help our life flow we want to learn to discover the voice of our Higher Self. We will need to learn to read and trust its signs and feelings. Know that your Ego will probably fight you every step of the way to override your inner wisdom. Ask your self why having this person or thing in your life would be important to you. Try to be as honest as you possibly can because if it is to stroke your ego, then you may be in for a few bumps and bruises along the way. While your ego uses fear to get its message across, our Higher Self will use passion. Most often those things that we are most consistently passionate about are in line with our Soul and as such will flow.

We can have what we want but it is not as clear cut as some may be lead to believe. We need to know more about the parts of our self that attract our experiences to us. The more we learn to be in line with our Higher Self and therefore our Soul, the greater likelihood you will be at peace, your life will flow and you will get what you want because it is in alignment with why you are on the planet in the first place.