Wanting It, Wanting It All!

Dr. William K. Larkin

 When we are in a DownSpiral or DownSpiraling, we are susceptible to many voices, and one of the strongest is what seems like our “unconscious.” It is actually our subjective mind that is finding an easy way out for anything that is negative by dumping these into your stream of thinking. Just try it. Start thinking about negative things, start feeling sorry for yourself, tell yourself you have failed at many things and will fail at more. Add a few more and then see how easy it is for your subjective mind to feed that DownSpiral.

Why is that the case? It’s really very simple. When we are in a DownSpiral we do not have the analytical gifts of our strengths. We are instead playing to our weaknesses, and our weaknesses are comprised of the negative material that is part of our subjective mind. It goes like this: in a DownSpiral, you check out the material in your subjective mind that has to do with negativity- disdain, hopelessness, frustration, lack of decision making, and just about anything that makes you feel like everything is on top of you and that you are trapped.
 
You will never find what you want in a DownSpiral, at the bottom of the barrel, or going down further into it. The voices of the DownSpiral are not voices that generally can be trusted, because they tell us things that aren’t really the things that we want, or we think of things that we want in a way that makes them seem out of reach. What you name in a DownSpiral is usually a reaction to not feeling good, coming from resistance, tiredness, or exasperation. They are not the ideas that will fulfill you. When you are in a DownSpiral, you do not think of things in a realistic way that will make you happy in the long term. And even though there may be exceptions, it is not the rule and it not the easy way to do this. It is not the way that remains firm.
 
Many people think they know what they want, set up goals and elaborate plans, only to reach their goals and find out that what they thought they wanted isn’t what they wanted at all. Now that’s not all bad. Sometimes we have to do that and it’s just part of the learning curve. We can always learn from that. But it should not be the rule and shouldn’t be the result of serious work on one’s goals. The truth is that we can be a lot better at setting our goals, so good that when we realize them, they satisfy our longings. What we all want are real goals that satisfy real longings.

That happens first by staying in an UpSpiral for a long enough time that it begins to be possible. The decision to stay in an UpSpiral over time is paramount, because as a spiral, it is a metaphor for a gaining, increasing energy. It builds emotional and mental capital, it builds reserves, and it builds confidence in “you knowing you.” The longer you are in an UpSpiral the less time and energy you will spend listening to other people tell you what you should want and do. You just won’t be attracting it nearly so much, and when it happens, it will roll off you more and more because it doesn’t fit. What does fit, you’ll retain because it awakens your inner voice.

When you stay in an UpSpiral over a period of time, one of the key things that happens is that you will use your strengths more. Both intentionally and unintentionally you have to be using your strengths more. And this is the secret. The more you use your strengths, the more you know what you want. It starts to bubble up in you. New desires, new wants, new “knowing” start to surface. You are open to more, you are looking at more of the world, you are letting more of what enlivens and sensitizes you come into your life. It is the UpSpiral that creates a state of being that makes you receptive to what you want on the outside and more open to what you really want on the inside.

Positivity isn’t just being happy and it isn’t just feeling happy things. The emotions of love, peace, gratitude, joy and hope are states of mind that enlarge our being and put us in touch with the ground of our being, if we will allow that to happen. In an UpSpiral, you are touching who and what you really are. Whatever is dark or wrong or “the shadow” is there as a result of being on the other side of positivity. In essence, any darkness pushes us toward the light, sometimes painfully and slowly, but even the direction of the opposite of positivity is toward itself.

The deepest essence of you is love, peace, gratitude, joy and hope. You were made that way and as you exist in these states, you attract to your attention and to your knowing what fits you. Your wanting and your desire will increase, not decrease. What you desire will fulfill you more authentically because you are attracting it from your own state of being in this UpSpiral of positivity, in your own unique way.