The Desire Beneath the Desire, by Victoria Moran

I get a lot of stuff. People tell me that sometimes. “You’re a ‘manifester’.” Or “You have a prosperity consciousness.” When they’ve said that, I’ve said thanks, all the while wondering why I could have such a stack of the proverbial “cash and prizes” and still feel that something was missing.

I traced it back. What did I want the most for the longest time? That would be to get thin. To stop dieting. To stop hating myself and living part-time when I’d lost some weight and felt presentable, figuring I’d better do all the fun stuff as quickly as possible before I cycled into binge-eating and fatness again.

Then I got what I wanted. It took a major plunge into recovery principles and a total psychic overhaul, but the result was being able to go vegan after years of wishing I could. (It’s inconvenient to binge-eat when you’re off anything containing eggs and dairy products.) By then, I no longer craved thinness. I got thin anyway and it lasted. But it wasn’t enough.

I wanted to be married. I’d been married, but my first husband died young and suddenly and unfairly. Our daughter was four. After that, I needed so much to put our family back together, to restore the missing piece. Not surprisingly, nobody was volunteering for the missing-piece role! After nine years, I realized one sunny afternoon that I was okay as I was: I had my daughter and my work and the spiritual adventuring that was central to my being. Two days later,  I met my current husband in a coffee shop.

It was, and is, a good marriage. He loves me so much it’s embarrassing. But I still wanted more. I wanted to be on the Oprah Winfrey Show. That was certainly a legitimate goal at the time for an author of self-help books, which I am. I zeroed in on that aspiration with the single-mindedness that tends to result in earthly miracles, but can also mean missing out on life in the meantime. Finally it happened. And a few years later, it happened again.

But I was still me and the yearnings persisted. I’d stopped focusing on the Oprah dream after the first appearance and started focusing on relocating to New York City. I wanted to be where they publish the books. I knew I belonged on the magical island of Manhattan, built on a crystal bed, providing a lovely mystical reason for all the wonder that goes on there. I had to be on that 2-mile-wide sliver of real estate nestled between two rivers, that place where your phone could ring, and your life could change.

I visualized and treasure-mapped and wore black and ate bagels. And I got here. It’s as grand and glorious today as it was when I drove the U-Haul across the George Washington Bridge in the year 2000. I’m in my place. I fit here and life works here. But once unpacked and settled in, the yearnings returned, this time for more reach, more audience, more influence.

And then the ah-hah! struck, at the right time because it’s always the right time, even though it seemed terribly late for a writer of self-help books. And the ah-hah! was: It doesn’t matter how many dreams are fulfilled and how many prayers are answered. Until I can know deep, deep down and inside out and through and through that I’m absolutely fine and whole and complete and sufficient, I’ll spend the rest of my fleeting, precious life chasing dreams and praying prayers. That’s when I saw that beneath all those desires, all those things I wanted, each one perfectly fine in itself, there was something else, the deep, deep need to be enough. When I have that, I have it all. And although I still have dreams and goals and visions, and ask for them the blessing of God and guides and angels, I have today only one real prayer: Move through me. The rest takes care of itself.

This realization was a long time coming because I feared that if I felt sufficient, the glittering gifts would elude me. If I had enough, I reasoned, they’d go elsewhere. That was as wrong as believing that the earth is flat or Atkins is healthy. The truth is: It’s only wholeness that can attract all that’s meant to be mine. Happy things. A bigger life. A greater destiny. When the perks collect, they’re delightful. And when one doesn’t show up the way I’ve envisioned, I don’t have to sink into despair, because I know that a truckload of others are on their way.

Victoria Moran, HHC, AADP) is the author of twelve books, including the best-selling Creating a Charmed Life and Main Street Vegan: Everything You Need to Know to Eat Healthfully and Live Compassionately in the Real World. Her Main Street Vegan Academy, training and certifying vegan lifestyle coaches, is accepting applicants for October 2015 and April 2016. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram @MainStreetVegan and on Twitter @Victoria_Moran.