I Took a Pill in Ibiza

I was in Ibiza, deep in the kind of trip where you spend the days talking about what you’re calling in and the nights believing it’s actually possible. My friend Jenna was with me, and we were both all the way in it, having those conversations about what we could create for ourselves, manifesting out loud, treating the whole island like proof that the magic was real.

And there was something I wanted. I wanted it with my whole body. Something specific, something with a price on it, and the universe kept telling me no. Not once. I went for it maybe five times, and five times the answer came back the same. It’s not going to happen. It’s not going to work. Each time, I noticed I wasn’t tight about it. A little frustrated, sure, but not gripping. And underneath every attempt was this request I kept sending up like a prayer: show me this works. Let me get this thing so I know the magic is real.

By the last attempt, I had one try left. And right there, at the edge of it, I caught myself. Because I had handed my entire belief system over to whether or not I got one thing, without even noticing I’d done it. I was about to let a yes prove the magic real and a no prove it a lie, and that is the exact opposite of what I actually believe.

The magic was never whether I got the thing.

I don’t believe the outside thing is the proof. I don’t believe attainment is what shows me I’m supported, or held, or that my desires get to be met. Sometimes the thing I’m reaching for isn’t even the best thing for me, and its removal is the actual gift. So I sat there on that last try and reminded myself of all of it. And then I did the thing that turned out to be the whole lesson. I went for it one more time, fully, all the way, and stayed completely okay with it not coming.

I tried once more with that energy. And it happened, just like that. I got the thing I wanted for about a quarter of the price I had been quoted, a quarter of what I had already agreed to.

I tried every way possible, and I tried without being attached, and that turned out to be the whole key.

Here is what took me years to understand. The win was beautiful because I got it, and it was beautiful before I got it, because I had already gone the whole way without the attachment. The gift was not the thing. The gift was who I was while I reached for it.

Let me back up, because this part gets misunderstood constantly. We are earthly beings living in a material world, and we are allowed to have material desires. The wanting is not a spiritual failure. The wanting is aliveness. We came here to experience this place fully, and part of that is reaching for things, becoming the person who can hold them, taking the actual moves toward the actual life.

None of that is the problem. The work was never in wanting less or caring less. I was going after that thing in Ibiza with everything I had. The work is in refusing to let the attainment decide whether I’m good enough, whether I’m worthy, whether I get to be proud of myself. You keep the strong desire. You take the whole desire off the scale where your worth is being weighed.

Who I become on the way to the thing is the actual life. That part is mine no matter what happens at the end.

And I was riding high on all of it, thanking G_D, thanking my aunt who watches over me and spent so much of that trip in Ibiza with me. Then, on the flight home, the universe handed me the test.

Staying neutral when you win is one thing. Staying neutral when you lose is the whole practice.

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