“Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.”
~Rumi
Sometimes things are so obvious, and so much taken for granted, that we fail to notice their power. You might be asking why you aren’t happy and at peace, why you feel anxious or insecure, stuck in the past, or limited in your creativity.
Well, the answer is right under your nose, closer than you would ever imagine. Isn’t that amazing? Â And here it is:
What you are interested in is what is created in your life.
“Interest” – not a particularly sexy word, but its power is huge. When you are interested in something, it attracts you, draws your attention, and arouses your curiosity. You are engaged and involved with it (like my new puppy who keeps stealing my socks).
And interest is always happening. In any moment, your attention is somewhere. What are you interested in – right now?
The Tunnel Vision of Habits
Most of us have developed habits that determine what we are interested in. If you are prone to feeling tense and agitated, you will be interested in fearful thoughts. If personal drama is compelling to you, you will foster these stories through gossip and internal monologues. If you are bent on avoiding painful or challenging feelings, you will be interested in compulsively shopping, drinking, socializing, texting, working – anything but being still.
And if you are convinced that who you are is insufficient, limited, and needing approval, your attention will be squarely on what you lack and need – not on the fullness of wonder and possibility.
If you feed fear, drama, avoidance, or neediness, what will be the result? A life that manifests fear, drama, avoidance, or neediness. Be brave, and check it out in your own experience. What are you interested in?
The Dynamics of Desire
When you take an honest look, you might discover that what you are interested in is not what you really want. You want peace and ease, yet, in reality, you promote conflict and division within yourself and your relationships. You want contentment, but you foster sadness and regret. You want to express yourself fully, yet you actually stunt creative impulses.
Where your interest goes, especially if you are acting out habits, creates an environment that keeps you mired in discontent and limitation, walled off from your deepest heart desire.
What to you really want – and what are you interested in?
If these are not aligned, then something needs to change or things will stay exactly as they are. You are being asked to shake up your familiar ways of being. And if these aren’t working for you anyway, what do you have to lose?
The Sacred Shift
As you realize what you have been focusing your precious attention on, you stand at the precipice of making a sacred choice:
- Do you want to know your true magnificence?
- Do you want the pain to stop?
- Do you want to realize that you are inseparable from peace, love, and fulfillment?
Then lose interest in stories, needs, behaviors, thoughts, emotions, physical sensations – these are all objects that come and go. They arise and pass on, proving they are temporary, unreal, and far from the truth of you.
When you buy into them, they create an illusion of who you think you are. But they lead to false identities that cause suffering and mask the purity and freshness of now.
Instead, become very interested in the space of awareness in which these objects appear. Realize that before any idea, emotion, or event, there is you, aware and alive. How could you perceive any object without first being aware of it?
Be interested in the fact that you are aware, now, right in this moment. As awareness, do you resist anything? Is there a problem? Are you happy?
Let your interest rest in awareness. There is a natural intelligence that will guide you to do exactly what you need to do. You can trust that thoughts will appear when required by the situation. You realize you don’t have to spend your energy trying to figure anything out.
If you are suffering, take a look to see what you are actually interested in. Then refocus to simply being aware. Be willing to let go of familiar ideas of who you are and discover unfathomable peace, intimacy beyond words, and unbounded happiness – right here.
What do you discover when you recognize where your interest is going? What do you really want? I’d love to hear…
