Studies In Conscious Creation Vol II- Motivation
**Disclaimer** In sharing elements of my story, I, in no way, desire to malign anyone in my family-or others. I see myself as the creator of my own experience, including the one I was born into. I judge no one, resent none, but sincerely love and appreciate all. Everyone is on their own journey. I also believe how I ‘saw/see’ my life experience is my own perspective and as such, subject to my own interpretation of the facts, and not a reflection on those who were part of my world .
Well, as the title suggests, I want to give some thought to those things that motivate us to move forward on our dreams and desires. On the flipside of that, I also want to look at what we hide behind and make our scapegoat for NOT moving ahead on them. And finally, explore the validating motivations we can fabricate to allow ourselves to be happy in the pursuit of our pleasures.
Of course, in this small space, I’ll only be opening the tins, rather than dragging all the worms out. I imagine they will wriggle out of their own accord...and once they do, there’s no putting that lid back on! LOL
I am going to use myself as my example-as I usually do. That’s because I really only know about me and whilst I am certain that I’m not the only one responds to things the way I do, I can only speak for myself. What follows are some of my conclusions regarding my own “methods of operation”.
Who Am I To Be Happy?
Without going into any longwinded details (just for a change! lol ), I will point out that my childhood circumstances were ideal for demonstrating contrast, so I would by default catapult desires for better. It is an automatic thing to want health in sickness. I wanted peace in the storm. I wanted an oasis in the chaos. I was only very young, when the change to my circumstances came.
My life and disposition were such that certain erroneous beliefs had been given great leave to seed and grow even by then. Thinking that I was the centre of anybody’s universe but mine was one of them. This was the way the stage was set when the opportunity to have my desire to be out of the environment came.
Here’s the thing: we get what we focus on. I got what I wanted, even tho it cost me dearly-the event ultimately splintering the family into chards. I loved my family more than anything, I thought-but obviously not more than myself. I had to be out of that place. It is this love for Self that has always come to my rescue. I guess you could say, from even way back then, as a very little girl, I saw that the only person I could save, was me.
I also saw that I was the only one who would.
So...in this instance, self preservation was the motive to have the something better I could see in my dreams. It was my motivation, and it made my dream my reality.
BUT here’s the thing. There were some in my immediate family who DIDN’T want to be out of that situation. I can only assume their fear and focus delivered a reality for them as well, and it played out in tumultuous ways for my brother. He blamed me, and said things that implied I had betrayed other family members. Not many years later, that brother killed himself. We were on good terms by then, by he’d had enough, and his words sowed a seed that took deep root, that for me having what I want would bring heart break to others that I loved.
Guilt for being happy accompanied me in the form of deep depression for many years, and a desperate loneliness that led me all sorts of places. I had no right to be happy when all my family were SO miserable. And they were!
Who am I to be happy when others suffer?
But once again, I left the environment that made it hard for me to be happy, and went out on my own. I had about $80-something dollars (my big inheritance! Lol) and a bowl , spoon and fork from my grandmother and an enrolment in Art School! Can naivety and desperation be viewed as gutz? Yes. I’ll give myself that J
Jumping ahead, events led then, to me becoming a mum .
Now, I had a REAL reason for making better choices. My babies were my unspoken justification for everything, including bringing out the very best in me. I was always fascinated with inner workings, but struggled with old patterns of behaviour in some areas, until I had my babies. My strong memories of early life were the guide for me. I never wanted them to feel the ‘bad’ feelings I’d had, or know the traumas I’d felt, but I did want them to know the deep love and appreciation I’d felt even in the midst, and how precious family are.
Being the kind of person that could teach and impart all the best things is all I cared about. I lived it from the heart before them, and was alone with them until they were 5 ½ and 4 ½.
Scenario after scenario played out in my life that confirmed my belief-that I could only have what I wanted at the expense of others’ dreams. Eventually, I slid comfortably into the role of false piouity that many know...that one of sacrifice.
Find and Be the Scapegoat
So, now we jumped way down the track and I’m married with five babies.
I know, without a shadow of a doubt, I lacked the wherewithal to do something constructive my life in my late teens. I did a year of Art School, found it too lax, and enrolled in a Fine Arts degree-filling in time coz I really didn’t know what to do with myself. If I hadn’t had such a compelling to recreate a family unit, perhaps I would have made something from there. Instead, I gladly had babies.
I still say it some of the finest work I’ve ever done! You will too, when you meet them!
I think I wanted that solid family unit behind me and it gave me great stability. I’d moved into my dream environment but in doing so, the old idea of having a happy family or my personal dreams came into play again. It was either/or again. This time, I chose ‘sacrifice’, so that I could continue to give my family what they needed to be happy.
None of these motivations are cut and dried. They all interlace and intertwine. I isolate them for identification’s sake, but all were simultaneously present to varying degrees. This one, of feeling the need to complete my commitment to my children has really stayed active to this day. With the youngest one approaching 18, the compelling to pursue my individual life has grown progressively stronger. I still feel a measure of responsibility to ‘take care’ of them and supply a home-which I do, but not so much now, that I can’t accept certain types of opportunities-if not all.
Thing is, I felt it had to be this way. I wanted to be mum until they had grown. My mothering and lifestyle have changed over the past 8 years of being single again, but I’m still basically PRESENT and in the home. A direct spin off from my childhood.
And here is the beautiful part, in the almost 30 years I’ve spent being a mother, I have finally become the person who is ready to live their own personal dreams, and I know it doesn’t have to make anyone miserable.
Today, I know nobody owes me anything, let alone to save me. And by extension, I have found the liberating counter truth of knowing I can ‘save’ no one either. If I am aligned to my dream, I will get it and the people around me will get their own version of reality according to their focus.
This brings me to my last point:
The Place of Altruism.
So...one of the ways that I found my dreams gained access to the ‘acceptable’ genre, was to somehow see them as “good for all”. I still wasn’t enough reason to have something. The only way I could protect the people I loved was to ensure that my desires had elements that were good for them too. That became the defining criteria for a long time.
But as with everything, who we are must surface. And I have always been such a lover of growth and deep spiritual connection, so that growth must come-no matter what! At times, it has broken through in great dramatic, and what some considered uncharacteristic, leaps sideways. I’d find a way to level the extremes, bring the pendulum back to centre, but still get fix of expansion. This put pressure on people around me to grow as well. Something, not always well received.
Getting back to “altruism”. It can be used either way, to support or to avert your dreams. But both are exercises in Ostrich-ism (that disease of sticking one’s head in the sand). The truth is MY dreams are mine and your dreams are yours... for YOU. Each one of those people we love has their own and- dare I say it?-apart from us! Do you want them to modify or sacrifice what would make them most happy for you??
What healthy person would?
Nor are you expected to do it! No one is. Not you, not me, not the people you love and wish would never leave.
But here’s the real danger, and my strongest point for this blog: In attempting to make your dream acceptable on any terms other than the fact that it makes you happy, is to move it away from its purest form, and once adulterated, it cannot lead to the place of pure joy. Nor leave the most empowering legacy.
That’s not the end of it. It’s not all over. Life is a never ending process of refinement...as are you, and I, and our respective dreams.
What I’m Aiming For
I think my dreams have reached their purest form, and my heart the cleanest state, when I recognise that I do what I do PURELY for the love of it. I do what I do out of SHEER PLEASURE.
I need no other motivation, nor any other validation. It’s not my job to fix, change or save anyone. What relief that is! I live simply to follow the compelling of my own heart to do that which I love. I don’t need any other reason. It doesn’t have to be marketable. My job in life is to find ever increasing degrees of freedom for these endeavours.
The exceedingly lovely by-product of putting all this energy on myself, is freedom. Freedom for me, freedom for others and the sweetest, purest legacy I could ever hope to leave with the planet-
The legacy of demonstrating the power of living one’s dreams.
This is the only life I’ve wanted to live and the only legacy I ever wished to leave for anyone.
