Sometimes, we get a little confused in our personal growth work.
We fall into thinking we need to “get somewhere,” that we need to become something different than we are. We think we need to become wise, or loving, or calm, or sane.
That is not what I know to be true.
What I know to be true is that we each have all the wisdom and love we need within us.
Our work is to remove the blocks to it.
To me, this is the best of news. It means that all of what we need is there. All of it is innate. It’s our spiritual inheritance, so we can all say a huge Hallelujah and Thank You.
But over the years most of us become blocked from the whispers of wisdom, from our compass’s signal of true north, as we make our way in this human incarnation.
How do we get blocked?
All kinds of agendas are projected on to us in a wounded world. We experience traumas and hurts. We are inculcated with the lessons others have learned from their traumas and hurts. From our first moments, amidst all the goodness, we also bump into the everyday limits of love and courage and patience in the people who care for us. We can’t not. This is what it means to be human.
From those experiences, we make up our conceptual maps of the world. We weave narratives about how things are and how we need to be in the face of them. We build scar tissue.
Those maps and narratives and scars block us from accessing the voice of truth within. After all, that voice often has something to say that flies in the face of everything we’ve been taught.
Then, when we are ready, we begin the work of shifting those early misunderstandings. Spiritual adulthood.
Sometimes we can remove the blocks, sometimes just soften them, sometimes just make a small crack of questioning in what otherwise would be a wall of vehement belief.
We do that work by bringing our thoughts and beliefs into the light of awareness.
How do we know which thoughts need attention? Our lives show us. Where are we suffering? Where are we causing harm to others? Where are we acting in ways that give us results out of line with our deepest intentions? These point us to the areas of our thinking that need attention. Could you ever imagine that your pain and problems had such a compassionate intention?
We can look at what we are thinking, what we believe about ourselves and others and the world and how things should be. We become willing to question whatever belief feels like a knife, or a force of separation, or a heavy weight in our chests.
We look back to its roots.
Then we make a choice about how we might think something different, how we might try on a new belief, a new thought.
So that’s the reminder for today. You don’t have to invent or practice anything to be host to the divine qualities of clarity, wisdom and peace. You just need to do some work to unblock your connection to that part of you.
Your inheritance can never be threatened or stolen – it can only be forgotten about for a time. It is up to each of us to remember, to remember her.
Love,
Tara
Photo by Andrew Neel
