Inquiry · “You Are Not Your Thoughts”
Transforming Motivation
To examine and redirect what drives you — loosening the pull of acquisitive craving and clarifying the deeper aspirations the wisdom traditions call the soul’s desire, following Walsh’s first central practice.
Transform motivation (Walsh, practice #1): craving can be examined and redirected. Inventory what really drives you; see how acquisitive wanting renews itself; practice wanting less in one domain; then ask for the deeper “soul’s desire” you’d want for its own sake. Protect the reflection with scheduled, sacred time; let the driving energy reorient from grasping toward aspiration.
What it is
This is the first of Roger Walsh’s seven central practices: transform your motivation — reduce craving and find your soul’s desire (Essential Spirituality, 1999).
Its premise is that much of our unhappiness is driven by craving — the restless wanting of more (possessions, status, sensation) that the wisdom traditions identify as a root of suffering — and that motivation itself can be examined and redirected.
The practice is to look honestly at what actually drives you, loosen the grip of acquisitive wanting, and clarify the deeper, quieter aspirations Walsh calls the soul’s desire. It works with the deeper Self beneath surface wants (All Is One), the perennial principle that releasing the grip is what lets fulfilment in (The Inner Creates the Outer), and the recognition that what we most deeply want is closer than the chase suggests (All Is One).
The Method
A faithful reflective protocol, in the spirit of Walsh’s first practice:
- Inventory your actual motives. Without flinching, ask what really drives your days — approval, accumulation, security, sensation, comparison. Walsh’s move is to make the usually invisible engine of craving visible.
- See craving’s cost. Notice how acquisitive wanting tends to renew itself — each satisfaction quickly resets the wanting — and how this keeps fulfilment perpetually one purchase or achievement away. Seeing the pattern clearly is itself part of loosening it.
- Reduce the craving. Deliberately practice wanting less in some domain — simplifying, declining an upgrade, letting a desire pass un-acted-upon — to test how much of the restlessness was the wanting itself rather than the lack.
- Ask for the soul’s desire. Turn from “what do I crave?” to “what do I most deeply aspire to — what would I want even if no one were watching and nothing were gained?” Let the quieter, more enduring aspirations surface.
- Protect the practice with structure. Walsh insists redirection needs deliberate time: “You need to have a routine of some kind with sacred time carefully set aside. Otherwise the world’s distractions and demands will consume every open moment.” Schedule the reflection rather than hoping it happens.
- Let motivation reorient over time. The aim is a gradual shift of the driving energy — from grasping toward aspiration — that then shapes the other six practices. (Sourcing note: the practice name and the short quote are Walsh’s wording; the reflective steps are a faithful application drawing on the craving/desire teaching common to the traditions he surveys.)
Source & Lineage
Roger N. Walsh (b. 1946), professor of psychiatry at UC Irvine and a leading transpersonal psychiatrist, presents this as practice #1 in Essential Spirituality (1999, foreword by the Dalai Lama). It synthesizes the traditions’ shared diagnosis of craving (notably the Buddhist tanha, but echoed in Stoic and contemplative-Christian counsels toward simplicity) with humanistic psychology’s interest in higher motivation and self-actualization.
Common refinements
Moralizing desire away. The aim isn’t to brand all wanting as bad, but to loosen compulsive craving and clarify deeper aspiration.
- Confusing self-denial with transformation. White-knuckled deprivation usually rebounds; the practice is to see through craving, not merely suppress it.
- Stopping at diagnosis. Naming your motives is step one; the work is the gradual redirection, repeated over time.
- Skipping the protected time. Walsh treats scheduled, sacred time as essential — without it the inquiry never happens.
- Refinement: pair the reflection with a small concrete experiment in wanting less, so the insight is tested in behavior, not just thought.