Visionary Intelligence: How to Shape Your Life
The pulse of desire weaves through every aspect of our lives, shaping our actions, aspirations, and—ultimately—who we become. It’s not just the fleeting whim or superficial craving we often think of it as; it’s a profound force that drives our evolution.
Inside the depths of our desire is a force I call visionary intelligence—a compass that guides us towards greater alignment with our truth and deeper intimacy with life.
It is, I think, the universe’s expression working through us. To be tapped into this helps us live with more richness, sensuality, and aliveness, which is not only an antidote to anxiety, depression, and chronic unfulfillment, but also the key to fully and authentically expressing the unique puzzle piece that is our existence in the universe.
The Key to Full Expression
Desire is one small aspect of the psychology of a human being. However, I think the phenomenon of human desire is a crucial part of full expression, because, built into it is all of our nuance and weirdness. If we really let ourselves go into it, things quickly get creative and there are an infinite number of things it can manifest as, based on who we are.
Now when I say desire, I’m not talking about intimate desire, although that does form part of it.
But what I really mean is the global desire you experience everyday—the voices inside you that want you to see, feel, create, taste, experience and become.
I track my emerging desires as part of my daily routine—and I have for many years. In the mornings, I spend idle time contemplating what I want, or what’s coming through me, and I put it onto a list. Right now the list is haphazard and crazy—exactly as it should be—and features everything from things I want to learn (French), to things I want to do (live aboard a dive boat), to goddesses I want to become (Artemis).
As the days, months, and years roll on, it’s easy for me to track what was fleeting as well as the deeper current of what truly wants to come through me, which is my visionary intelligence speaking.
Visionary Intelligence as a Compass
Our desires often manifest themselves through the culturally-conditioned lens of our mind, which limits the ways in which these natural, emerging forces can take shape. You have probably felt the experience of getting something you want and wondering why the result left you unsatisfied—this is because there are different depths to desire, and multiple ways to meet desire, and learning to discern between all these things is key to actually getting what you want.
Take my desire to live aboard a dive boat, for example. Dig down underneath and it’s not so much the experience of being on a dive boat that I crave, but rather, the feeling of being isolated, free, and surrounded by nature. There are almost always multiple ways to fulfill our desires, and sometimes they have little—or even nothing—to do with the form that they take at the surface.
Becoming mentally attached to the the outcome we think we want stops us from working organically with the desire as it takes shape.
Ultimately, true fulfillment comes from understanding what resonates with us at a core or soul level, outside of fleeting impulses, social norms, and conditioning. A sustained ability for introspection and acute self-awareness is required to navigate the intricate layers of desire and uncover what’s really true.
The Art of Discernment
The universe is intensely alive with options. It unfolds with a complex, multidimensional wealth of variables that occur inside and all around us at all times—most of which we have no control over.
For example, right now I’m drinking tea on my front deck, and two kookaburras have spontaneously landed on the grass in front of me. They are having an interaction, and I will witness this interaction until they fly away just as spontaneously as they arrived. The same kind of spontaneous birth and death of occurs inside us all the time, in the form of new feelings, thoughts, ideas, and desires arising and disappearing as they please.
We must get good at discerning what is deeply for us, and what is deeply not, because if we are only tapped into surface level desires—or no desires at all—then it’s easy to get carried away by the options available to us.
3 Ways to Tap into Your Desire
When we tend to our desires, we are most aligned to our becoming.
The deep feeling of interconnectedness with the universe that this process makes possible is what helps me feel most alive. To feel the outside world bring something to life inside me, which I then create my specific version of in the outside world, over and over again…this brings me into a deeper appreciation of my part in the whole.
Creating a relationship where you can tend to the desires emerging from within, without any kind of ulterior objective, is the first step in becoming more aligned to your purpose.
Here are three ways to do that:
1. Sensuality: Tap into your senses.
A fast way to build a relationship to desire is through your physical senses. Maybe you have a desire to experience a certain taste in the morning, to feel salt on your skin, to feel a particular sense of possibility. Think of one of these desires, and consider the deeper feeling you are hoping to feel as a result of its fulfillment. What is the real desire at the core? A physical touch? A feeling of mindfulness? Relaxation?
2. Attraction: Pay attention to what you’re attracted to.
From the people you’re interested in, to the books you read, to the music you like, attraction is key to desire. Take a look at your life right now: much of what’s there is only there because you want it there. Sometimes all you have to do is look around and find how—and where—your desires are already being manifested on a regular basis.
3. Ideas: Track your ideas.
Our ideas are an interesting manifestation of our desire. Typically, ideas come to us out of (seemingly) nowhere, and can be extremely wide-reaching. Although not always easy, following the thread of your free-form ideas back to the true desire beneath can help you get a sense of what you really want.
The question you aim to answer is, what am I really trying to say that made my brain come up with this?
By unraveling the intricacies of your desires, you unlock the door to a life of authenticity, purpose, and profound connection. Beyond fulfillment, it encourages you to channel your desires as a force for personal growth and fulfillment, sculpting your life into a masterpiece of your own creation.