You’re at a restaurant, looking at the dessert menu. You read the ingredients: walnut carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, coconut ice cream and candied carrots. Your mouth is already watering—salivating with primal desire! So you order, more than likely with great anticipation.

As I’ve been pointing out lately, wanting is really just about wanting—it’s not about getting. Similarly, getting is just about getting—it’s not about wanting.

So did the cake meet your expectations? Did it go beyond them? Fall short of them? You wanted the carrot cake. You got the carrot cake. It was what is was! And now the question is, did you need it?

Wanting is about wanting. Getting is about getting. And needing is about needing!

Perceiving the often subtle distinctions between needing, wanting and getting can facilitate dropping body and mind, releasing awareness from the identity we call “myself,” or “I”.

How is this possible? Because when we perceive things as they truly are—not, in other words, through the filter of our projections, aversions and expectations—then the knowledge, wisdom and intuition that remain are not personal. Rather, they are experienced in the realm of what is often called “Big Mind” or “Big Heart.”

Now the movement of life is no longer dictated or guided by the Menu of Our Desires; we have returned to the Source, the spacious stillness of vast peace and fulfillment.

Now go ahead and order whatever you want!