a path to nowhere
Have you ever taken a journey with no set destination? It is a rare thing.
It is also rare to be given the space to write about the simplest of processes which has no end goals in mind – to do away with all challenges (no loss of weight, no running of the marathon, no learning of a new skill), in favour of something that is free, natural, universal: being. We are, all of us, here to be – to grow, feel, savour, learn, share, as consciously as we are able – and to move past judgement and self-limiting beliefs, to a place where our minds may be fully open and our lives more fully lived.
When we remove our focus from the dream of the future and feed it fully into the present, we move our energy into the living, breathing, immediate moment too – where attention goes, energy flows – yes, this we know. And, it’s this sense of really being, rather than tirelessly planning and relentlessly doing/challenging/achieving, which has had the most profound impact of all upon my own little life.
Opening my mind up to the moment – and, more specifically, the positive possibilities within each moment – has felt like an act of spiritual alchemy. Rapidly, I have felt myself become far, far more resilient and optimistic – and if we were all to allow ourselves to simply be far more often, we would also tap our selves into our innate wisdom and our richest intuition. When we awaken to the possibility in the moment, we begin to make sense of things, to make kinder decisions, to better bounce back after disappointment.
We humans are naturally very good at making the best of a bad a thing – at communing, collaborating, protecting, celebrating and supporting each other. Yet, we allow ourselves to forget this (and focus more on how good we have gotten at dividing, conquering, harming and hurting our selves too). We are so incredibly complicated – able to feel dozens of contradictory emotions simultaneously – and each one of us is a unique work of deepest, miraculous, biological wonder. Just as I sit to write this, the word ‘multitudes’ enters my mind. “Yes, that’s it,” I think.
A feeling leads me to tap into my Inbox and open an email. I click on it, and through to the blog post – to find these words from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
The process I’ve been living – the slow and steady opening up of my furled mind – has taught me that there’s no such thing as coincidence (Einstein’s brilliant line, ‘Coincidences are god’s way of remaining anonymous’ – just glorious!). I know now (though for many, many years I did not) that the truth and the miracle are bound up in the hunch and the niggle: that all things are connected, that intuition is profound, and that answers abound, always (though they may not be immediately obvious).
‘Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.’
Yes, I think again: the journey is all that we shall ever have and all that we shall ever need. By focusing too long and too hard on The Destination, we take ourselves too far down a road, to nowhere.
