Welcome to the Gathering Pod, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast.

I'm Martha Beck.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Gathering Room.

I am so happy to have you all here in my basement with me.

It's super fun.

And I'm so happy to be in the room with you wherever you are. Not in a creepy way

at all, but I'm in your house. Just think of it that way. Okay, so today's topic is what I call

wanting not to want what you want. When you don't want to want what you want this is a little step up

from where most people spend their time most people spend their time just wanting stuff and being

frustrated that they don't get what they want and then after a while some people get so tired of

wanting stuff that doesn't come that they start fighting the wanting.

And there are some people who at this point can take what's known as a spiritual bypass.

So, you know, instead of saying, I just, I really, really want a car that is reliable and takes

me to work on time or whatever, they say, it's okay that the car

it breaks down. I'm just going to meditate and I'm going to offer it up to whatever divine force.

And it's fine. It's absolutely fine. But it isn't fine. Underneath you can feel that they're still

not fine, right? They're trying to make it fine. So this week I had conversations

with two friends. One friend was saying she wanted something to happen in her life. It hadn't

happened yet. And she really, really was longing for it to happen. And she was talking about

ways she's trying to stop that longing or analyze the longing so she can let go of it or whatever

because it's very uncomfortable. Then I had another friend who has a hard time breaking from anxiety,

you know my favorite topic, anxiety. And she was telling me that wanting not to be anxious

...