Manifesting, Desire and Happiness

Q: Being in the now is a tool to stop thoughts and come in contact with the inner being and higher self. I have been there but find that something is missing in that reality. I have been studying thoughts, feelings, and emotions and what creates in the universe for some time.

"Give up the ‘me’ and all thoughts about ‘me’ and just be here, without your stories, beliefs, opinions, judgments, dreams, fantasies, memories, self-images, and feeling and just experience. You are that which experiences this life."

I agree with most of this... but just simply being in the now without any desire at all doesn’t bring anything into creation. We are creating our reality, and to create anything you have to see it, feel it, and be it.

A: You are correct in discovering that the pointing to the inner truth is also just part of the truth. My sense is that spiritual teachers tend to emphasize the part of the truth that is being overlooked, and so in most cases we point to our true nature, since people generally already have a lot of contact with their desires and feelings.

Desires and feelings are as natural as flowers and grass. They arise naturally out of the exuberant joy and fullness of our Being, and they can be a part of how Being creates. The one thing I might add is that fulfilling a desire by manifesting something doesn’t really make us happy. It is just that when we successfully manifest something, for a moment our desire subsides, and the inner joy behind desire itself rises to the surface. This is a subtle distinction, but it can be freeing to discover that desire and happiness both flow from the same source. Both are expressions of our essential joy. Seeing this can actually free you to desire even more, because it is equally rich to want something as to get it! And yet you can also hold all of your desires lightly, because what matters more is the source of the desire, not the object.