It’s taken me 48 years to really hear this essential thing about myself:

My Soul likes adversity. Enjoys it. Wants it, even.

Hmm. It sounds perverse, doesn’t it? But maybe you can relate to this…

Sometimes what we think we want isn’t what we truthfully want.

I got this hard to swallow little nugget when I was making my “I am ready for a Miracle” manifestation list of wildest wants, the shoot for the Moon list where you leave nothing out. It’s an interesting exercise when it alerts you to desires, hungers, you may not have allowed in. Like, for me, a simple grilled cheese sandwich – cheese! Bread! Which makes sense… as it’s been over 25 years.

I’ve done similar manifestation lists this numerous times but I’ve never experienced this. I wrote “I want to be free from chronic muscle pain and sensitivity…” but when I checked in with my Root, the area of the body located in the pelvic bowl, also known as the “seat of our Soul (Knowing)”, this statement didn’t sound entirely true. Instead: I want to make peace with chronic muscle pain and sensitivity. I want to stop being in conflict with myself, because that’s eating up my energy and time, and because, my Soul enjoys adversity.

Back up… whaaa?

I just heard: My Soul likes adversity.

My Ego did not like this one bit!!! It still doesn’t.

But you know what? It feels true. My astrological chart corroborates. My Moon sign, which illuminates what makes our Soul happy, is in Aries, sign of the warrior, and every warrior needs adversity. My Cancer Sun is in a grand cross involving Mars, Pluto and the nodes. This is very true to my experience — especially in light of the skills I’ve acquired and the person I have become due to adversity. Oddly “my soul likes adversity” felt much truer than the desire to eliminate the perpetual sources of my discomfort. It also felt truer than all the statements that followed, many of which were invisibly prefaced by: “If I didn’t have these chronic sources of annoyance and discomfort, then I would finally have (XYZ…all the things I’ve ever wanted)…”

Not true. There goes my Miracle list. All of my wildest wants and hungers became questionable, suddenly, when exposed to the fire of this Truth: My “wants” were predicated on eliminating the very means by which my Soul has chosen to experience life.

Not a very powerful position for manifesting, is it? Believing oneself to be limited never is.

The reality is: We cannot manifest what our Soul is not in alignment/agreement with.

This goes against popular spiritual techniques that coach us with the idea that we can manifest or cure anything.

It is the missing ingredient in many of the manifestation techniques we’ve learned in New Thought.

We can only have what our Soul is in agreement for us to have, and experience.

This is why discerning your Soul’s YES from your Ego’s story is a worthy investigation.

Otherwise, we try to “manifest”, fail, and feel we have done it wrong – or worse, that we are wrong. Which leads us right back to core wounds/conditioning we have around lack — of not having or being enough— the same core wounds we want to step out of.

We cannot be in our limitless power; we cannot understand and deeply know the powerful co-creative capability of our True Self, if we are attempting to manifest from our Ego’s desires, thoughts and beliefs instead of our Soul’s knowing.

There were other things on my I Need A Miracle List- I want to teach more; I want to create, be inspired, joyful; to experience new connections and relationships. This felt True… but not dependent on adversity’s elimination. Quite the opposite, truthfully.

The exercise helped me to realize that I had been putting so many conditions on myself. I’d been using every setback, which, this fall and winter, have been considerable for my human self – arriving in sets of huge ocean waves, knocking me down and holding me under in the blackest of waters – as evidence that I would likely be unable to have, or sustain, my deepest desires.

I didn’t and don’t need a miracle; I need to make peace with my Soul’s True path for me.

I actually didn’t even want a grilled cheese sandwich. I realized this hunger was a knee-jerk reaction to feeling limited in other areas.

Instead, I want to be at peace within, in total acceptance of, this path my Soul has chosen for me.

To me, this meant inviting magical & synchronous ways to be more at ease in physical reality. It also includes the invitation to step into my Divine Identity, my limitless power, more fully. Because I believe the worst lie we tell our self is “I can’t have what I want”.

As this unfolded, I gradually went on active alert for other areas where I might be in conflict with my Soul’s Truth. For instance, during the height of the recent holiday pandemic surge my stepdaughter got married, in Berkeley, California. I was very against this idea of gathering; it felt dangerous, reckless, and it went against every code of behavior and belief I’d undertaken since this all began; to not attend big events, and to strongly limit indoor interactions, most especially during a surge. Consciously, I did NOT want to attend this event; my Ego was 180 degrees opposed to it. Yet at the end of a prolonged period of embodied energy work and tapping, I released all obstacles to the Truth, and discovered…

My Soul said I would enjoy the event, and it was in total alignment.

Huh?

Because my dedication is only to my Soul’s Truth, I listened. I attended the wedding, and it went beautifully for all involved, and most importantly, for me (a family member expressed surprise that I was there; in fact, all bets were on my NOT going).

I’m sharing this with you because I am thinking of this New Year, and how most of us want things to be different. Yet the Soul often has very different ideas than the Ego mind, about what kind of different we want and what we will actually enjoy. If we are not listening from that deeply embodied place, we miss out on some real gems. I would’ve missed out on some major personal connection time with my sister (pictured with me, below) and my adorable eight-year-old niece flower girl, as well as sharing in a major celebratory family milestone.

This is being driven home to me, lately, again: We cannot manifest from Ego. Ever. As my teacher used to tell me: The Ego is NOT a creative force. The Soul is. Only the Soul can manifest — set things we truly want into motion that deliver fulfillment.

We can only manifest what our Soul wants for us to experience. This also means we aren’t going to eliminate what our Soul wants to experience.

Including, for me, a degree of adversity

So, when we’re creating intentions, resolutions, wants, goals…doesn’t it make sense to attempt to dance with your Soul? To more deeply sink into what wants and desires that are truer for you? To unravel what’s blocking you from what you truly want?

This whole exercise caused me to sit up and take notice, and to ask myself: What other things am I telling myself I want, or don’t, which don’t ring True? It was an interesting way to ring in the new year… And I have to say, my primary energy tools for working with this are 2 specific cards from my energy deck (if you want to play with these ideas with me, join me in setting Soul Intentions for 2022 — see below).

Now, I have one elegant intention for 2022: To be in conscious alignment with my Soul’s deepest desires for me. My Heart’s Desire, or — a mon seul désir (magic alert: if you recall my post about Venus retrograde, this phrase is written at the top of the Unicorn tapestry).

May you find your peaceful sense of inner alignment, your heart’s desire, this year of 2022 –and always.

P.S. Want to set some Soulful Intentions with me?

We all want this year to be different from 2020, too. Let’s do it.

Guided by two Intuitive Energy Divination Deck cards – the Abundance and the Root card(s)- let’s engage our limitless, powerful, True Self and write some poetic intentions that feel deeply resonant and soulfully True. Let’s tune into our wants and desires on a Soul level and become co-creative in 2022.

To make magic with 2+0+2+2=6, I would like at least 6 guaranteed attendees.

WHEN: Sunday 2/6 at 2 PM HAST (convert timezone right here)

WHERE: Zoom. If attending live, to foster connection, please be open to showing your radiant face on camera, and being recorded. Once I receive enough recipients and its a go, I will email you a Zoom link a few days prior to confirm. If you cannot make the time, the Zoom session will be e-mailed to you.

HOW MUCH: Guarantee your spot by sending $25 payment to either Paypal [email protected] or Venmo @jesshepherd. If I do not get the required amount of attendees, I will refund your money.

BRING: Yourself, and a journal. You do not need to own the deck to participate.

The post When You Aren’t Manifesting What You Want appeared first on Jessica Shepherd.