How to Become Who You Want to Be part 4

What are obstacles you presently recognize preventing you from being the one that you could be? Even though we did not examine what caused us to crave a certain way of life, we have already made plans of who and what we want to be. The growth and cultivation of this plan might be like a carefully tended flower garden, or things crawling from a fermenting, stinking muck pit!

That reminds me of my first spring thaw here in Wisconsin. The thawing of the ground after the winter came as a big surprise! The basement flooded, coming in from underneath and from the walls. A friend went downstairs and then came upstairs to tell me, "Come downstairs to the basement and take a look.” I replied, "No, I am not going down there because there is dragon poop down there. Just get rid of it, please!” She looked at me strangely…. I do not want to look at dragon poop, and I could see it all over her rubber boots when she came upstairs! She had it halfway up her boots and I certainly did not need to see the source of that!

Like that, perhaps what is growing in the basement of the mind could become an unhappy resource of life planning! Perhaps the criteria we used to develop our personalities and wishes for how we spend our life could be coming from a flooded basement with the dragon poop. However, with careful reflection of memories, it is probably a mixture of the sports hero, teachers, parents, books we have read as well as stories that we tell each other and our self. All of this becomes part of our personal story and method for dreaming our dream. This is actually a rich source of material for quality inner work toward spiritual transformation. Anyone who says meditation is boring is not looking in the right places! This is cogitation meditation, inner work, cleaning, and getting rid of what is not healthy.

There is something important that we want or need that has not been realized so far, but there is no open space for it to arise yet in our everyday, ordinary life. There is something you truly want and truly need related to this question about creating new circumstances toward becoming the one we want to be. What is keeping us from doing it? It is because something in the perceptions is preventing us from becoming that. Why? What are some of the reasons?

For some, a poor habit is how they stay (or do not stay)on track. One seemingly good idea follows another, which becomes the enthusiasm of the moment. However, by following it, suddenly it is not there anymore, or another good idea comes along that sounds even better! Maybe our role model of how we would like to be is Brittany Spears, but she is no more! She is like useless! Now Brittany Spears is like so yesterday! So, forget Brittany Spears. Who is it now? Suzie Ubee! Now we want to be like Suzie Ubee, and we have a new person to emulate. This is the enthusiasm of the moment. I am going to do this, no; I am going to do that, no….Then we cannot do anything because we cannot decide what we want to do.

Similarly, I believe that our goals could have crossed purposes. For example, someone might want to be a sports hero, and want to be a cancer researcher/astronomer combination. Physically, mentally, and time-wise, they just cannot do all of those things. Many good people want to have an altruistic career by working in some non-profit and helping many people but also want to make a lot of money. This is a hard decision to make with crossed purposes such as this. What will win? I do not know.

To be honest, I believe the main reason that you are not yet the person you want to be is because you are just too busy to create new conditions. You did not have time to get the education you need to achieve the special goals you want. An unprepared education means that you do not know how to go about realizing your own possibilities, as well as becoming free of influences, and you do not have the information, or inner knowledge to prepare to be what you want to be.

One challenge we all face in our work of becoming our self is fear of ridicule. It is not easy to reveal the special you of your dreams because you could be ridiculed for it, and so you do not try. Another challenge is fear of failure. We might be afraid that this amazing dream of who we could be is something that we might not be able to do, and so we do not try. Is that like not having confidence? The possibilities or the opportunities could be right there, but fear or insecurity prevents us from even embracing it.

We are also often confronted and afraid because of insecurity, rejecting what is offered to us without even seeking favorable conditions that will arise the fulfillment of our life’s desire. In Milwaukee, there is a beautiful Calatrava designed winged building, the art museum. We might not think of getting on an airplane to Spain, and knock on his inestimable door to blurt out, "Mr. Calatrava, you are my role model, I want to be just like you. Will you teach me everything you know?" So, instead, what if Calatrava came to your front door and said, "Hi. I will take you on as my student, and I personally will teach you how to make incredible winged buildings." Would you say, "No, no thank you, I cannot do that.” Sometimes, even when opportunity comes, you do not take hold of it.

Failure to reach success can also be blamed on confusion by changing our mind and thinking that we are not sure that the goal we chose is the one that we still want. After creating stories to help achieve goals and finally decide what we want to do, we might then waver, and think that was not the right goal after all. Some people habitually reject a previous goal, later even drop that new goal for still another new ideal, and never accomplish anything of real value. This is like digging a hole here, digging a little bit of a hole there and dig a little bit of a hole over there. They never even get started before changing their mind!

Once we make a quality decision about how we will use our life, we then must also be flexible to move from wishing to be, to an active stage of preparation. Otherwise, we might become like others who become so invested in wishing and wanting a goal that the wish becomes the thing and not the accomplishment. Would we really be happy or satisfied only wanting to be just the wisher of an extraordinary way of being? There has to be a point where wishing evolves to active preparation to become that one. To be continued….