When you want something with all your heart…the Universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
-Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
Notice the ellipsis in the quote above? Yeah, me too.
It’s the missing piece, but we will get there in due time. I am taking you on a gentle tour of my mind and letting you in on my musings.
OK, obviously this quote has always resonated with me. The first time I read The Alchemist, I was about a year into my first spiritual awakening and I could not believe how absolutely touched I was by the truth pouring through the pages. It seemed I read the book with my hand on my heart the whole time—it was almost like a pledge of allegiance to myself—to always be true to myself, as that was the biggest treasure.
Being true to myself has been a path of devotion of sorts—not from a place of Me, Me, MEEEEEE but from the intention of staying connected to Source and listening. Listening for the patterns and the opportunities for discernment have become a significant part of my day-to-day.
In my listening, there was a message that continued to persist. It was not something that was new to me. I had heard it before and quite often—only this time it hit a little differently.
So on the surface the message kind of pointed to the idea that maybe the thing we think we want and never seem to get—or we get disappointing versions of it—maybe—just maybe: we do not actually want the thing itself.
If you are reading this and notice some tension in this statement, stay with me. This is not the full story. We are taking the scenic route to the deeper part of the message—one that comes to us through my relationship with the Spirit of Guilt.
So remember the quote at the beginning of our journey here? Here’s the whole quote:
When you want something with all your heart, that’s when you are closest to the Soul of the World. And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
-Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
The Soul of the World was the missing piece.
As I tuned into what it would mean to be closer to the soul of the world, I found myself asking a different question: What actually nourishes me? The question led me somewhere I was not expecting.
Recently, I found myself in conversation with the Spirit of Guilt—a recurring character in my relationship with the Soul of the World. Here is how it happened:
Every time I would go to my computer to work on my book, I would immediately start to feel tired. I would do my best to fight my way through that; once the coffee was brewing I would start to obsess about all of the other “important things” I was not doing…. Yeah, apparently the Spirit of Guilt and I had become quite the duo—experts at hashing out all of my failings together.
Well, one of these “failings” was that I had been inconsistent with the physical aspects of my Kung Fu practice. Thinking about that would of course allow Junior (that’s the word I use for the ego) and the Spirit of Guilt to succeed in taking away my desire to write or to go to class.
Instead, my mental and emotional energy just focused on my failings and it took a lot of work to give myself grace, lol, about why it was ok that I was not doing those things—such as I had been traveling several times since I got my black belt, my dog had passed away, etc. Why am I even listing them? I think just to give you a real example of how we can get in our own way.
Anyway, it was pretty draining.
But just recently I saw that while I wanted to complete the book with all my heart, my Junior—with the Spirit of Guilt’s help—was more focused on wanting to give my Kung Fu practice the same level of precision, time, and care that I gave it in the year and a half leading up to my black belt. I realized I wasn’t just feeling guilty. I was trying to recreate an old version of myself—one whose life had room to devote hours every week to earning a black belt.
That’s what I call the Illusion of Absorption.
As I stayed in stillness and listened, I marveled at how the Illusion of Absorption loves to default into old settings—settings that served us well for some time. Are we all just robots with programs? (That might be a letter for another day.)
Maybe the Universe was conspiring to show me how I limited my creativity and what I needed to do to adjust my expectations and redirect my energy.
Now, instead of doing mental gymnastics about Kung Fu, I’m guided to direct that same devotion toward finishing my book, writing, and serving my clients and the Love Renegades community.
One of the first things to emerge from that shift is The Temple Steps—an online gathering where we’ll pause, listen, and practice seeing differently.
In a Temple Steps Gathering, we will explore:
-An Illusion of Relationship™ that is asking to be seen
-the energies at play
-collective reading and healing
-messages from the animal kingdom
-card pull for select live participants
Our first Temple Steps Gathering is happening on Wednesday, July 22 at 4 PM CST/ 2 PM PST/ 5 PM EST on one of your preferred platforms below:
Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/laurenkaywyatt
YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/loverenegades
Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/lauren.k.wyatt
I hope to see you on Wednesday. It feels like the best time for us to begin our journey on the Temple Steps together.
