Living your dream

Positive and Negative Desires
There are often two forces that propel us toward our dreams: I call them positive and negative desires. A positive desire is a longing force inside of us that connects us to our higher self, urging us to have greater self-expression and fulfillment. It has a very magnetic quality of connection to it. When you have manifested it, you feel fulfillment because you are satisfying your destiny, your purpose. The following are good indicators that your desires are positive.

Take a look at your journal or index card where you just wrote down your desire. Then ask yourself:

• Does my desire make me feel energized and happy when I think of manifesting it?
• Will fulfilling my dreams challenge me to go beyond where I am, to create greater possibilities in my life?
• Will this desire positively impact me and other people?
• Do I need to call on the help of a higher spiritual source to create it?

If you have answered yes to any of these statements, you are in the positive desire zone.

Negative desires come from a void inside of ourselves that we can never fill. These types of desires can come from feeling the hollow spot in your heart because something is missing and no matter how busy you are it keeps nudging you to recognize what it is and to fill the void. The Tibetans refer to this as the realm of the Hungry Ghost. No matter how much you feed this ravenous creature, it never feels full or satisfied. It’s important to know whether your desires are positive or negative so that you can avoid nurturing the insatiable Hungry Ghost.

The Hungry Ghost
The emotional energies of envy, greed, insecurity, selfishness, fear of not being enough or having enough drive the desires and dreams of the Hungry Ghost. People find themselves in the realm of the Hungry Ghost when they let their insecurities and fears disconnect them from themselves and their core energy. For instance, the feeling that in order for you to have something, you have to take it away from someone else, feeds into your fear, which creates further negative desires.

The Hungry Ghost also represents the addictive side of human nature. Instead of acknowledging and healing feelings of low self-esteem, you might find yourself trying to overcompensate or numb the pain with food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, sex, or any other addictive behavior. These habits offer only momentary relief. Worse, they trick you into continually repeating and augmenting these behaviors, which is why this ghost is never satisfied.

Negative desire can also be generated by one’s peers and environment. The parental lingo for this is peer pressure, but even grown-ups can fall victim to this strong desire to be just like everyone else and have what they have. This type of negative desire ultimately comes from a place of discontentment. While it can be a catalyst that allows you to create larger opportunities for yourself and partake in bigger rewards, you will never be able to enjoy your riches until you are able to shift this catalyst into a more positive light.

The following are indicators of negative desire. Check these against the desire you just recorded:

• Are my desires born out of hurt and revenge?
• Are my desires motivated by proving that I am good enough?
• Are my desires coming out of a sense of obligation or trying to get someone else’s approval?
• Are my desires coming out of feeling inadequate?
• Am I envious of what other people have?
• When I’ve manifested what I desire, will I still feel unfulfilled?

If you have answered yes to any of these statements you are in the negative desire zone.

Unfortunately, negative desires are extremely powerful, and often attractive, at least on the surface. Fear of feeling invisible and not being loved can drive someone to be a great performer, a powerful politician, or a famous sports figure. The fear of being poor has propelled many to become CEOs, barons of Wall Street, and presidents of banks, in positions where they amass great fortunes. But unless desire and longing come from your soul and not the realm of the Hungry Ghost, you will never feel fulfilled and satisfied. What you have accomplished will give you only momentary pleasure and joy until the longing for the next thing begins.

The intention behind the desire is what categorizes it as either positive or negative. Most of us are initially motivated by negative desires because we feel like we have to overcompensate. Somehow, we are not enough. For example, if you recently ended a relationship with someone, you might desire to lose twenty-five pounds and show off by dating some handsome “star” so that your last beau will eat his heart out. Eventually, you’ll realize that even though you’ve lost the physical weight, you’re still carrying around the burden of the emotional weight of being hurt by the breakup.

In order to realize your desires and feel good about them, you have to shift negative desires to positive ones. This shift can occur only when you are completely honest with yourself. Honest enough to recognize your negative motives and the hurt they create. Remember, this is not a mind game, it is a shift in the way you manifest your energy. To transform what was once a negative desire into a positive desire, think about the following scenarios. You can still want to lose weight. However, instead of spending your energy thinking about how angry your ex will be because you look so great, use that energy to think about how fabulous you will feel because you love yourself and are happy to be moving on with your life. Instead of going after a particular man who you feel is a trophy that will make others envy you, connect with a deeper desire to find your soul mate, whether it’s that man or someone else. Success may be the best revenge, but when you let go of your need to get back at someone who hurt you, you can embrace your desire and create the dream that will truly make you happy.

Release your energy to create your dreams, not to block the dreams of others. Take the step to recognize your negative desire. See it in your hand: a beautiful butterfly ready to take flight. Say to it, “I release you in love and light,” and then watch it flutter off. Now your positive energy of desire is available.

Finding Your Deepest Dreams
Your desires are what inspire your dreams. They come to life as you get in touch with and craft your desires into tangible realities. For example, the desire to be free can cause you to dream of having a job that would create financial rewards and structures that allow you to make choices that stimulate your adventurous spirit. The desire not to be beholden to anyone can create a dream of having a life that supports a strong sense of self-reliance and personal power.

Dreams are magical; they emerge from a place of hope and desire deep inside of us. They are the possibilities of life that imprint themselves on the blank canvas of your future. Dreams are messages from your deepest self, whispering to your heart what you were meant to do, to accomplish, and to become. They are catalysts. They give you the platform to regenerate and reinvent your life. No matter what type of challenging circumstance you are faced with, dreams will keep you moving forward.

Many people think that achieving their goals is the same thing as manifesting their dreams. This couldn’t be further from the truth! Goals are alpha driven and come from a mental concept: “What do I need to do to accomplish what I want?” Dreams, on the other hand, are magnetically inspired. They need to be created out of our imagination and serve as the bigger picture of what we long to connect to and have in our lives.

Dreams cause you to go beyond your mental and emotional limitations and experiences. They expand your past beliefs about what you feel you can have and deserve to receive. They challenge you to use your own will to succeed, while having the faith and belief in a higher spiritual source that is there to help you manifest what your heart desires. Dreams impart the lesson that all you have to do is ask and hold fast to the intention of what you want to manifest. They challenge you to become single-minded, to not let negative thoughts stop you from doing what is needed to live your dreams.

No matter what passage of life’s time march you find yourself in—your twenties, thirties, forties, or fifties and beyond—it is important that you keep your dreams alive! Comedian George Burns had a deep desire to perform, to make people laugh. This dream kept him going well into his nineties. He said, “Age to me means nothing,” and “I can’t die; I’m booked.” He was vitalized by the incredible energy of his desire to express himself, and he was living his dream: to entertain people.

First you have to identify what your dream means to you. Dreams and desires should connect you with your spirit, your deepest yearning to experience love and connection, and to affect the world for the better. So for right now, you may simply want to find the time to run a marathon or play with your kids more often, travel or be a mentor to a young person. If you know there’s something that will bring you fulfillment and joy, acknowledge it, go after it, and shape it into a dream that encompasses this as well as your other desires.

It’s only natural for our dreams to change over the years, but the deeper dream that drives us toward our destiny remains the same. When I was younger, I recognized that my deepest wish was to touch people on such a profound level that they would be inspired to open their hearts to what they wanted and go for it no matter what. Whatever profession I’ve had—acting, directing, healing—I have been able to do just that.

Discovering Your Dream

Take out your journal or a pad of paper and pen so that you can fill in the answers to these key questions. They will help you connect the desires you brought up in the last exercise to a bigger dream—a dream that, when you pursue it, will lead you further on your path of destiny.

1. When was the last time you felt genuinely yourself and exactly where you ought to be?
2. What makes your heart start pumping and your creativity kick into gear?
3. What makes you feel younger and more alive than you usually feel?
4. What desires keep coming to the surface no matter how much you try to ignore them?
5. Do you ever feel like you’ve just plugged in to something big and have an unlimited source of energy? When does this happen?
6. Is there anything you do that is so exciting it makes even the most difficult sacrifices seem insignificant?

Look at your answers and find ways to remind yourself of these dreams throughout the day. Write them on Post-it notes that you stick up around your home. Make a screensaver on your computer that will flash the words before your eyes. Write them on an index card that you can use as a bookmark when you read every night before bed, or put the index card in your pocket or wallet and pull it out several times a day to remind yourself of the dreams you have identified.

For those of you who have lost your faith, I am here to tell you to get back on board; your dreams can come true. For those of you who have never dared to have a dream for yourself because you felt you weren’t important enough or felt that your dreams were too big to accomplish, too impossible—forget it! I am a living testament that you can dare to dream. Nothing is impossible when you set your intention on what you want and work with your spiritual energy. That’s what I did to manifest my biggest dream, even when people thought I was crazy to want to have children at my age, and as a single parent. We are all put on this earth to live a life of joy and fulfillment by awakening and igniting our true desires and manifesting our dreams. If I could do it, so can you.

When you focus your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual energies on creating a dream, you set an intention that sends out an energy force into the universe. Your dream and your intention surrounding it are an energy force of creation. It acts as a tuning fork that draws to it what it needs to help it manifest. As if by magic, it creates a magnetic force that draws the circumstances and people to support and give energy to the creation of your dreams. Serendipitous opportunities and events start to occur that you could never have planned.

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