To Walk The Path
The purpose of any truth is to learn to live it.
To embody it. Own it. Let its veracity become the key to liberating our hearts and beings on a deeper level.
After all, it doesn’t do any good to obtain wisdom, truth, and knowledge if we don’t integrate it into our being. Without integration, it’s mind candy- - something sweet that our brain sucks on for a while, which does nothing to sustain us, because we haven’t found ways to make it nourishing and substantive in our lives.
I think about these things a lot.
Hard not to when this essence has defined my life path for the past few years, and I keep learning in brand new ways the difference between talking about change verses truly living change.
Or as Morpheus so eloquently put it in The Matrix: There’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.
And that’s why we’re here- - to walk the path. To engage with life on a bigger scale. To have a quantum relationship with universe and spirit that is delicious, juicy, magical and REAL.
The only way I know to do that is through opening up our hearts, listening to the voice of the deeper self, then finding the courage to live our truth. In as many ways as we can.
That is what embodying our truth is all about, and though each of us will do this in our unique ways, here’s three elements I believe we all need to be doing in order to slip slide into a deeper relationship with being a cosmic love ninja:
1. Developing practices where we devote space and time to listening to our hearts, because we cannot receive their wisdom if we are not listening.
Time in nature. Meditation. Journaling. A prayer practice. Tea and tarot. Intention lists. Simply placing your hand on your heart, closing your eyes and listening- - it doesn’t matter what it is, it just matters that it is. “It” being some sort of a practice that slows you down, stills your mind, and allows you to begin to drop into your heart wisdom.
The mind is a tricky beastie, with lots of ideas and thoughts that are not always our deepest truth. The heart, on the other hand, is all about our deepest truth and has a way of cutting through the rest of the noise and taking us to the crux of the matter.
Sometimes its wisdom might be as simple as slow down and breathe, other times it might have specific guidance for navigating something in our lives. Perhaps our heart space is our cosmic connection, and we better sense spirit when we are in that space. Whatever comes through, the heart is the space where our truth resides, so we can’t hear our truth if we aren’t carving out sacred silence to listen.
2. Keeping our hearts open to our process of self, so that we can remain fully open and aware of our truth.
Not all truth is easy to acknowledge. But the thing about truth is that once we allow ourselves to acknowledge and see it, we can’t unsee it. And so, we must learn to stay open to what we see inside ourselves, even if it isn’t easy to face or leads us to have to make challenging change.
Grace goes along way with this. Self-grace allows us to keep our hearts open to all aspects of ourselves and our truth so we stay aware of ourselves. Spirit-grace allows us to find the courage to bring that truth into our lives and live it so we are in alignment with ourselves.
But the only way we can stay aware and in alignment is to stay open. To let our heart be a vortex of space, grace and wisdom. Trusting that if we listen to them, they will guide us along the path.
3. Continually taking small steps that keep moving us in the direction of our truth north, because there are no shortcuts along the path- - the destination IS the path.
There are no shortcuts to our dreams. No shortcuts to leveling up and becoming a bigger person. No shortcuts to living our heart’s truth.
There’s just dialing in, listening, and then taking small steps day after day that move us in the direction of our true north. There is trusting, allowing, receiving.
Knowing that as long as we are finding ways to live what our heart is telling us that we will be fully supported on the path. Because that’s what embodying our truth is all about: Trusting. Allowing. Living our heart out loud.
Anytime that I’ve quantum leaped in my life- grown in bounds and galactic waves of new awareness- I always spend the following season integrating the leap. Always. Usually that comes in the form of challenges being thrown in my path where I get to apply what knowledge I’ve recently gleaned. Grapple with it. Then find the growth in the grappling.
The path IS the destination. Even though it often comes with more humble moments than it does shiny ones, it doesn’t mean it’s not magical! It means that we have to change our thinking from a linear, “am I there yet,” paradigm to a quantum, “it’s happening right now” paradigm.
Because each day is the destination. It is the Now.
The only place we can truly find happiness and joy. The space where we can work out our relationship with ourselves and this universe. Each day is so much more than a dot on a calendar or a space that moves us forwards into the next day. We can live a vertical existence, where we stay connected to our divine nature, yet find the gift in each human moment..
We can reach. Transcend. Descend. Ascend. Heed the stars. Be the wind. Sing with the raindrops and chime with trees hymns. We can love our families and each other and keep trying to be the light that we cultivate within. We can let go, trust the flow and know- - the act of walking the path is where our true wealth begins.
Realizing that every step that we take is exactly what living a soulful existence is all about, and that nobody can do that sacred soul work, but us.
Because like Morpheus once said: I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it. 😉