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What do I want?

The most important question to ask oneself is, “What do I want?” It means asking this at the highest level of your desires.

There may be many things you want in the external world, but here you are trying to identify the key principle that you yourself are seeking at the deepest level of the inner chamber of your heart. It needs to be your word not just that of somebody else, something that was read in some book or is popular in the culture.

We’re all “Googling” and doing other internet searches these days. However, before we can do any internet search at all, there is one thing that we absolutely must do to get started? We must have a keyword. As we continue our search, the keyword may refine. Search engines like google and others now offer other, more detailed suggestions when we start typing a keyword into the search box. Similarly, it is extremely useful if we have some idea of what we want at the deepest level of our many desires.

Choose a keyword for yourself, some word or phrase that really captures the spirit of that for which you are longing. It’s probably hidden deep in the inner world, underneath all of the seemingly countless other desires and words that have been programmed in as acceptable, proper desires. It’s a longing that has been there a long time, a very long time. It was probably there in early childhood. It was with you in adolescence. It is still there. But what do you call it? What is that single word or phrase that draws you back to that felt longing?

Just by having that word or phrase drift through your mind field, that deep memory is no longer latent, but stirs in wakefulness with a passion in the heart. There is a certainty about the purpose of life that suddenly emerges with clarity. 

Find that keyword that works for you and never, ever let it go. Write it on little notes around your house; maybe even on your arm, on the mirror. Be innovative in the ways you constantly remind yourself of this one keyword that captures the highest level of what you want out of life. It is your word, your phrase.

It may contain the many other lesser ways of saying the goal of life, or the steps along the way, but this one, this keyword or phrase pulls you, draws you to the stance where you know who you are and you know where you are going.

How to get there will emerge, on its own, through effort, and remembering your own keyword that captures the highest answer to the question, “What do I want?”