My friend and I were driving to visit a local mineral springs and she asked me this amazing question: it is more important to know what you want… or what you don’t want?
Now, obviously we’d like both, right? We want to know our preferences, both negative and positive. But if you were going to prioritize one, which one is better?
Knowing what you DON’T want is way more important. Here’s why…
First, it’s often easier to know what you don’t want than what you do want. I talk about this in my Goals Course; there’s a kind of a goal where you don’t know what you want and you don’t know how to get there… you just know that you want to get some someplace different than you are today. Starting with what you don’t want is the key to reaching these kinds of goals. There’s a lot more on this in my course, but I’ll give you a hint to start: be clear on what you don’t want and then closely examine the opposite. This could be as simple as acknowledging that you are unhappy and then identifying things that you will try in order to be happier.
Second, the things you don’t want get in the way of the things you do. We are a striving culture and we’re supposed to want and consume more, more, more. The power to decide that we don’t want something, that we don’t need it, is a revelatory — and revolutionary — act. I’m all about setting and reaching goals, but each goal has has an opportunity cost. Let’s say that you want to be more engaged with the land in your community. Taking a permaculture course, volunteering for a river cleanup, or starting an organic butterfly garden are all in line with your desire. Volunteering for a local fundraising drive for a class trip to another country might be a perfectly fine, upstanding, even moral thing to do… but it’s a distraction from what you want and takes time and energy and resources away from it.
When you can look at an opportunity (to win, to achieve, to do good) and say “this is not MY opportunity” you leave space for the things that are for you to manifest. Now, we all have to do things we don’t want to do (before enlightenment, dishes and laundry; after enlightenment…) but the more things you end up doing that aren’t what you want the less time and energy you have for the things that are. The power to say “no” (and this is an incredible, live-changing power) comes from discernment. We have to know what to say no to (and then have the courage to say it).
Third, announcing that you don’t want something and adjusting your actions accordingly is an incredibly empowering and magical act. It’s deciding for yourself the kind of person you are and allowing that person to comfortable in the world. When these preferences come from our core values (and not the whims of the moment or fashion or other’s opinions) they have deep power to transform our lives. Just allowing yourself to be in the world in a way that points you away from those things that do you not care about and toward those things you do is life creating. It’s ownership of the positive space of yourself to delineate the negative.
Magic loves positives more than negatives (better to enchant for heath rather than against illness), but magic also abhors a vacuum. You have to create the room for things to manifest. You do that by setting boundaries, saying no, and allowing yourself to have preferences. It’s sovereign to set the boundaries of your interests and your actions and then hold those boundaries firm. The magic to support this is for the courage, the fortitude, and the strength to do that.
This is a very Saturnian activity. Saturn is about focus and discipline, about boundaries and restrictions, and about the inexorable march of time. Saturn is the scythe. She asks us to cut away what is not useful or needed and focus closely only on the things we want to harvest. She tells us that boundaries are as much about keeping OUT as keeping IN. Saturn isn’t a happy planet. But she has her hand on all of us as much as any of the Luminaries or Benefics. She lives in every one of our charts and while her lessons are hard and her wisdom cold, she can be a powerful ally for being who we are in the world and deciding for ourselves what we do not want.
Recognize and understand your aversions. Create your To Don’t list (the only list where it’s good to not check things off). Set and hold your boundaries. Declare what you do not want and then let go of those things. Protect the boundaries of yourself.
