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#2

THE NOT-SO-SECRET PLACE OF THE HEART’S DESIRE


No behavioral advice or rules can bring us to know Truth or choose the timeless Good, because rules—even good rules--focus on regulating our behavior instead of enlightening the desires of our heart. And since it is our desire that determines our behavior (not the other way around), the emphasis on behavior or behaving is misdirected.

Trying to make ourselves behave, without a redirection of desire and will, is literally like asking the leaves on a branch to grow the tree. The leaves, like our behavior, stem from something else—the root of who we are, namely—what we love and what we will.
How do we change our will? We first have to find it. That may sound funny, but it’s true. Most of us are largely unconscious of the “thing” within us that is running the show. To find our will and know it, we simply have to examine what we love—not what we tell ourselves or others that we love since words come cheap--but rather, what we truly love.

But how can we know something so dark and hidden, so esoteric,lying deep within our subconscious mind?

Real simple: just look at what we spend our time and our money on.

That’s it: Time and Money. The best spiritual barometer in the world. And the most accurate.

Time and money say more than do all our sonnets and spiritual discourses, all our poetry and professions. What we spend our time and money on tells us everything about our actual priorities, what we truly value, and where we are investing our hopes.

The ground of each person is his or her ground of desire. This is a ground that no training or rules can ever get to. This is the domain of the individual—the heart’s ground. Only Spirit itself can reach our heart and will, and reshape them to love the Good. We cannot train ourselves to love. Love must be won through love itself.

The more we focus on our behavior, the less freedom from repeat patterns we will find. By contrast, the more we take an honest look at where we spend our time and money, the quicker we will see the root of our unhappiness and spiritual frustration.

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