Driftwood, driftwood
on trust, desire, and not knowing
Wanting is a lonely map. The energetic difference between wanting and desire is stark — wanting is gripping, desire is expansive. Can you feel that? It’s much easier to be in want. We get to project onto our wanting, we get to be in fantasy about it, we get to make it mean something. If I get x, then y will change. If only I had z. If I had x, my whole life would improve.
Some of my work in this lifetime has been unraveling my relationship with wanting. Much of my wanting has come from a place of scarcity. When I was 17, I remember saying to myself, “I can’t wait to be 18 and move out, life will be so much better,” only to be surprised when I was confronted with my own reflection.
Mostly, wanting is just the act of siloing our hearts into what we think we should want. Something comes along, and it walks the way we want it to walk, and it talks the way we want it to talk, but the energy is off. It’s a flag that’s easy to ignore. And we want it to be true so badly that we can’t — won’t — clearly see it for what it is: driftwood.
Driftwood is a sign from the universe1 that you’re on the right track, that your desire is getting closer, but the thing that showed up isn’t quite it.
All this to say, when I let myself surrender to what is — without gripping — I get to rest. I get to feel myself. I get to enjoy the richness of the in-between, the mystery, the not knowing.
In the not knowing is where I get to learn how to receive all of life’s abundance. It’s where I get to practice how to feel what’s true in my body. It’s where the deliciousness of life is harbored. And I intend to savor it all.
My surrender looks a lot like this these days.
May we all melt into the earth and feel rooted enough in ourselves to thank the driftwood for teaching us what isn’t ours.
May we lovingly melt toward a brighter, richer, truer self.
Thank you for reading Sacred Attention.
With lots of gratitude and warmth,
Christie
Driftwood is a term coined by Regena Thomashauer. I learned about driftwood when I was 21 in her 3-month course called Mastery, which is no longer running.