Goal Setting and the Infinite Moment

Hey friends,

Welcome to the first post outside of my long winded auto-bi-blog-raphy.

This is the writing that I'm most excited to dig into, so LETS GO!

I had a thought this morning while feeding my dog and making a smoothie about the correlation and congruency of two seemingly incongruent aspects of life...

GOAL SETTING & LIVING IN THE PRESENT

The capitalist world of money, fame and go go go would have you believe that there's little or no time for the present moment and that if you're not growing you're dying...

Which...Just sounds stressful

What a gut punch to those of us that enjoy slow mornings sipping our coffee from our favorite mug while petting the dog in peace. WOOF

This has become even more prominent with the rise of social media. You see it EVERYWHERE. Comparison. The constant need to outperform others... Who's "the best", Money Money Money, GRIND. UGH. 🤮

Ok now I actually feel ill. Haha.

On the other hand there's the hopelessly laissez faire new age spiritualist. The "live in the moment" type who blindly eats up the idea of going where the wind blows them and rejects the western capitalist idea of growth and goal setting in all of its forms.

The one who thinks that money is evil or at least not particularly necessary to their day to day happiness and fulfillment.

Both of these extremes aren't ideal, BUT If I had to choose between the two, I'd choose the latter.

I'd rather have little money and lots of time than be rich AF, stressed out and grinding while constantly living in a future idea of "eventually I'll have enough".

This brings us to the meat of this post...

WHAT IF WE COULD HAVE BOTH?

What if we could live deeply immersed in the present moment AND still honor the desires that bubble up?

What I've come to realize along my journey of addiction, homelessness, meditation retreats, building businesses, mentorship programs and setting massive goals is this:

• IT ALL EXISTS NOW

• IT ALL HAS VALIDITY

• THERE'S NO PROBLEM WITH ANY OF IT

Contrary to the popular belief system that most people subscribe to and think in terms of, you don't have to have an either/or mentality. The truth is that you can begin to look at things in terms of both/and.

In fact, I would argue that not only is it possible to live your life immersed in the present moment AND be moving towards massive goals and dreams, but it's imperative that you do both in order to truly get the most fulfillment out of life.

Hear me out...

While you can find a nice balance between both, I would argue that the ability to slow down and tap deeply into the present moment is the most useful way to move towards your truest desires.

The reason I say this is because your life will never not be RIGHT NOW.

I am under the assumption that this is obvious to most if not all of you reading this. It's literally the most obvious thing, which is counter intuitively why it's also so easy to miss on a consistent basis.

Ya know all of those hopes and dreams that you have? Yeah those arise with in you NOW. You move towards them NOW. When you reach those desires someday it'll be NOW.

Ok, now that we have that fundamental baseline covered, let's move on to the HOW of finding this balance.

The way I see it is that there are two different types of desire:

One we could define as Egoic Desire and the other we could define as True Desire.

The first comes from the protective mechanism of ego which wants us to fit in, compares ourselves to others, loves pleasure & instant gratification and ultimately wants to give us security. It's fear based. It lives in a perpetual state of being "on the look out for danger". I lived in this place for years and this is where most human beings (like 99%) live most of the time.

It's not wrong, it's not bad, it's just what the ego mechanism does. It more often than not leads to a certain kind of result, namely disappointment and suffering.

No need to judge it, (that's just more ego) just become aware of it. It's necessary to a degree. There's nothing inherently wrong with pleasure or security or comparison. It can be useful at times and has its place. It just has a tendency to get out of control and want to run the entire show.

If the ego could speak it would say something like "I want this and I want it NOW. If I don't get it I'm going to have a meltdown." (Cue Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory)

The latter, True Desire, comes from an entirely different place inside of you:

True desire is whimsical, curious and full of wonder like a small child. It doesn't have the stickiness of egoic desire. It doesn't insist that you act on it. It doesn't care whether you agree with it or not.

It's more like a nudge. Like a tap on the shoulder (at first). It doesn't give you a reason to act other than the enticement of adventure and the compelling mystery of the unknown which is VERY scary to the ego.

It's what many have called intuition or wisdom or the God-self.

The thing about True Desire is that while it may start out as a whisper, the longer you don't listen and follow it, the louder and more insistent it will get over time. It wants your trust and is patient, but it also comes with a cost if you don't listen for too long.

That cost can range from a deep sense of longing and regret to such a build up of pressure from not listening that everything in your outer world blows up and crumbles to make room for a new version of yourself to sprout. Essentially forcing you to listen.

As one of my favorite teachers Adyashanti says "You can't screw it up, you can just slow it up and suffer like hell for it."

So here's where we come full circle and weave together goals and capitalism with the spiritually infused surrender of the present moment.

In order to find peace in the moment AND grow exponentially, you have to start getting back to what is truly meaningful to you.

I'm a huge proponent of writing to sort yourself out. Just get all of your ideas, desires and wants out on paper where you can get a mountain top view of your inner world in outer form.

Then start sorting out what is actually yours (TRUE DESIRE) from what you've picked up from the outside world and THINK you're supposed to want (EGOIC DESIRE).

Again I must stress that SOME egoic desire is ok and necessary in order to interact with the world we live in. It only becomes a problem when you get lost in it and dependent on it. YOU get to decide where that line is. No one else.

Once you're able to figure out what's truly authentic to you, then you can start moving towards those things step by step with ease in THIS MOMENT. Yeah this one right now.

Remember, it's like, the only thing that exists.

Another benefit to this kind of goal setting which we could call "soul setting", (super spiritual I know) is that once you're on fire for what feels aligned with who you are, life tends to get out of your way...

Meaning that a kind of flow state will start to reveal itself.

You'll just "happen" to meet the right people, be in the right places at the right time and get the perfect ideas as to the next steps to take in moving towards your soul goals.

This happens because you're finally congruent with the infinite intelligence that created you and the rest of the universe (imagine that). When you're in alignment with the truth inside of you, you get everything you want, because it's what life wants to create through you.

Which is another paradox of sorts. You're on the one hand a separate unique individual human entity and simultaneously not different than the very thing driving you to create what feels most true for you to express in this lifetime.

BUT, that is another discussion for another time.

I hope you enjoyed reading this. Tune in next week for a different topic.

Until then, as always with gratitude I thank you,

Cole "The Colemination" Blackburn