Have You Outgrown What You Used to Want? Midlife Desire & Spiritual Growth with Dr. Judith
Mastering Life's Adventures: Being Your Best Self Through Soul Evolution!Show Notes
In this episode, Dr. Judith explores soul discernment from the perspective of desire—learning to recognize what still belongs to you and what no longer does—especially in midlife and beyond, when identities and definitions of success have accumulated alongside responsibilities. She explains how many desires are learned or formed for protection, and contrasts conditioned and protective desires with quieter, soul-aligned desires that draw us toward truth, love, courage, growth, and spiritual maturity. Through examples of Denise questioning a long-pursued promotion and Claire realizing her need to feel necessary, she shows how outer goals may stay the same while the inner relationship to them changes. Dr. Judith introduces non-attachment and offers three reflective questions to examine a desire’s motives and whether it expands something true or sustains an old identity.
00:00 Do I Still Want It 01:10 Discernment For Midlife 03:18 Where Desires Come From 04:43 Three Desire Types 07:12 Denise And The Promotion 11:10 Personality Versus Soul 12:36 Reconsider The Destination 15:17 Claire And Being Needed 19:39 Non Attachment And Growth 24:16 Three Discernment Questions 27:05 Closing And Next Week
More from Mastering Life's Adventures: Being Your Best Self Through Soul Evolution!
In this episode, Dr. Judith explores how God’s love is not only meant to comfort us but to transform us, especially when circumstances and people don’t change. She invites listeners to shift from asking God to fix situations to asking what is being activated and developed within the soul—patience, humility, forgiveness, courage, discernment, or truth without cruelty. Through the story of Evelyn and her sister Marilyn, she shows how divine love can help us keep the wisdom from painful experiences without continuing to carry the wound, set boundaries without denial, and release the need to be understood or proven right. Drawing on Jesus washing Peter’s feet, she emphasizes expanding our understanding of love, choosing a higher response in daily moments, and bringing honest struggles to God without self-judgment as the path of ongoing soul refinement.
Dr. Judith explores how, especially in midlife and later life, desires often change rather than disappear, raising questions about drive and ambition. She reframes this shift as God purifying desire by separating what is “mixed” in us—love with fear, service with needing to be needed, achievement with insecurity, faith with control—like refining gold in fire. Through examples of Ruth and Margaret, she shows how disappointments, aging, and changing family roles reveal attachments and invite deeper purpose, trust, and freedom. She explains fasting as interrupting automatic gratification to expose what’s underneath desire and suggests “fasting” from things like being right, rescuing, comparison, complaining, or being needed. She ends with a seven-day experiment to pause impulses, discern personality versus soul, and ask God to align desire with what brings us closer to Him.
The episode invites viewers into a quiet, guided meditation on desire as a possible pathway to deeper spiritual longing and closeness with God. Through breath, body relaxation, and imagining a protective white light from the divine, listeners are led to place their many wants on an inner “table,” choose the one consuming the most energy, and explore what it promises to provide (security, love, recognition, peace) and what the personality versus the soul may be seeking beneath it. The meditation distinguishes wanting from devotion, then moves through surrender and consecration—offering the desire to God for purification from fear, ego, control, and attachment to outcomes—while separating the form of a desire from its essence. It culminates in a deeper longing to “abide” in God and return to daily life carrying that stillness.
In this episode, Dr. Judith explores spiritual purification—how some prayers are answered not by receiving but by removal, and how “pruning” can free the soul rather than signal rejection. She explains the difference between devotion and purification, showing how we can be devoted to something good yet still attached to outcomes, approval, control, or identity. Using Jesus’ vine-and-branches image and a midlife example of Denise losing a desired leadership role, she highlights the distinction between the form of a desire and its essence, and how the word “if” can reveal conditions we place on peace and faith. She offers the PURE process—Perceive, Unhook, Release, Entrust—and invites listeners to examine one desire this week, then announces a special guided meditation episode on desire and purification.
In this episode, Dr. Judith explores how soul progress accelerates when our deepest desires mature into devotion—moving from many wants, to discernment, to concentration, and finally to living as though what matters truly matters. Using the biblical story of Martha and Mary, she explains how devotion creates an inner center that reduces fragmentation and builds spiritual momentum through repeated God-centered choices. She contrasts devotion with attachment, showing how devotion transforms relationships, prayer, and daily decisions by developing the inner instrument—character, discernment, courage, and love. Through examples of Denise (achievement and proving) and Claire (caregiving and returning to Source), she invites viewers to examine unconscious devotions, shift from protection to expression, and ask what their time, attention, and energy reveal about what they truly serve.