Coming from the charismatic Christian environment I was exposed to some amazing spiritual experiences and practices as far back as I can remember. I have parents that have been followers of the Way my entire life. They remain an amazing example and inspiration to me. I believe I am building on what I have learnt from them as well as the amazing experiences from childhood and early adulthood. It has become a journey of desire.
The Biggest Challenge
During my teenage years I had a solid rebellious phase. What was clearly a time I starting wondering more about who I am and where I fit in nearly led to disaster. With great mercy I experienced spiritual renewal and refocused my heart on higher things. The journey that followed was a journey to win back my heart. Back in 2006 I experienced public speaking for the first time when I was invited to speak to students about leadership and personal development. I walked out of the building that evening and thought to myself, “this could be addictive”.
I didn’t want to loose focus on the ‘will of God’ for my life and prayed that my desire would be purified. Accordingly I didn’t actively seek out public speaking engagements because I didn’t want my desire for recognition and significance to get in the way of His higher purpose and desire for my life.
I was very hard on myself and denied the deepest part of heart – my own desire. This state of being also activated an autoimmune condition that has resulted in physical pain on and off for about 15 years. This pain has taught me about my heart and mind.
“Pain is a great teacher but few wants to be the student”
-Unknown
What did I Learn?
Self rejection causes my chemical imbalances that activates genetic conditions. In other words, my thinking and feeling patterns activate process in my body that eventually cause disease (dis-ease). I rejected my own desire because I thought it was bad and God did not like that. It was a hard long slog up perfection hill. Everyday I lost my footing and slid back down to the bottom only to be faced by myself that told me I wasn’t good enough. “Get back up and ‘die unto yourself'”.
“The heart is deceptive above all things” – I can’t trust my heart. I can’t trust the desire in my heart!
Then during my quiet times I became progressively aware that as I went through this wilderness of purification something amazing is happening. I learned to worship God at all times for he is the source of all good and never changes. Many days I would wake up with immense pain and had to decide that I would look through this pain at God. I could either shout at Him out of anger (which I did initially and realised He didn’t go anywhere – He could handle my tantrums) or lift my spirit in recognition that He did not want me in this pain.
If He made me, He also gave me the desires of my heart. From that point on the journey took a different route from the depths of the valley towards higher peaks where I could see my own heart and desire as good. The question was just what to do with this desire? Set big goals and ‘go for it’? Tried that once or twice and it failed.
Instead, I started to own my desire and I have seen improvement in my health and all other areas of my life.
How to Accomplish Anything Worthwhile
For the last 4 years my focus has shifted completely. I have been on a journey to reconcile quantum physics, the law of attraction and desire with the God I know and love. What I have discovered is that once we have gone through the wilderness and our desire has been purified and reconciled it becomes time to walk out in faith.
We need to have a singular focus on the desires of our heart because as Denzel Washington says:
“The desire in your heart for something good is God’s promise before-hand that it is yours.”
Desire purified and reconciled are breadcrumbs of purpose to follow your destiny. Yes, they can mislead, especially when we are young and don’t understand the process and journey of desire. If we however abandon the journey and just get a job we don’t live from our hearts anymore. We do not live from the Creator’s love. Have we abandoned our greatest power as co-creators through the imaginative and life-giving process? To feel the love of the Creator and the desire in our hearts is to catalyse life for ourselves and for those around us. Live from desire.
Go from survive to alive.