Here’s a parable supporting this concept:
An old man passes to the other side. At death’s gate, an angel welcomes him in and lets him know that he can have anything he wants. He immediately asks for a big fancy house. The next day he asks for a beautiful wife to keep him company. On the third day, he asks for a fancy sports car. Day after day, all of his wishes are fulfilled. He can’t believe his good fortune! Days, weeks and months go by and he has everything he had ever wanted. Finally, there was nothing else to want. He says to the angel, “I’m grateful I got everything I asked for, but now I’m bored. I’m curious to see what it would be like on the other side, in hell. Would it be possible for me to go check it out?” To that the angel answers, “Where do you think you’ve been all this time?”
I love this story as it illustrates so well the necessity of our wanting. The question then becomes: which part of us is doing the wanting, the id, ego or super ego? Or you could say, is it our “smaller selves” or “bigger/higher selves?”
There’s a lot of talk lately about how our yearning and wanting is all part of the divine spark that initially created our Universe to begin with. It’s called, the “Evolutionary Impulse.” I first learned about it from a course I took on Evolutionary Spirituality taught by Craig Hamilton and his Integral Enlightenment Academy. He says that just as there is a “biological imperative’” (our will to survive), there is also an “evolutionary imperative.” Although I just mentioned that I had “learned about it,” I feel it was something I actually knew all along and was being re-awoken to it. It just seems so logical to me.
There is a condition in the U.S. and other parts of the world called “Not Enoughness.” It is tied to our North Star, our old definition of success. Many of us feel the need to have bigger and better as it applies to our material possessions, our careers and our status. This condition is insatiable. It does help the world go around, but at what cost? Many with this mindset have a dog-eat-dog worldview and feel justified raping the earth to satisfy their needs. This kind of wanting comes from our “smaller selves.”
While wanting is part of the human condition, hopefully we can evolve enough to align with the wanting of our bigger/higher selves and bring much needed healing to this world. May we all become aligned with the evolutionary impulse!
“When you want something with all your heart, that’s when you are closest to the Soul of the World. It’s always a positive force” (from the book The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho).