The Journey To Self Discovery Is A Thorny Path
LISAonthego has a guest post blog and loves G's writings, come read today.
The Journey To Self Discovery Is A Thorny Path
I’ve been getting closer to a friend as of late. It’s been very enlightening. As an autistic adult, I don’t socialize well. I thrive in afterthought, or conversation summary not so much in conversational depth. But being around her has introduced me to things outside my depth. I’m challenging myself and really seeing where I fall short. While I have been taking this journey I have seen one repeating factor… Self-discovery is often embarked on by those wanting answers they are familiar with, and an expectation of different and new results.
Becoming A Spiritual Explorer
Learning who you are, opening your mind, your heart and your soul to good things… or a new path is exciting. There are a million ways to describe it. I should know… I did two group sessions yesterday with a group of spiritually driven women who are all about energy and healing and keeping your mind open to the universe. They all approached it differently.
But even among these powerful women I still felt it… That nagging sense that they too were explorers trying to explore new lands with old expectations and guidelines. I felt the limitation in their journey and saw it in mine. Even when they felt they were open to the universe and what it was bringing… they were closed to unfamiliar changes, unknown or unforeseen energies and saw old energies, familiar ones as the cure and compass to their new journey.
But how can that be? If it is our instinct to leave the negative energy and pursue new positive and well-balanced ones… how can we use our familiar compass to achieve the journey? It’s like using an old map that is no longer relevant…
Think of it this way… If Explorers from hundreds of years ago… only ever used the maps they had… well simply put they would go in circles. Sometimes I think I see people going in spiritual circles… and not the good kind.
The Beaten Path
When you are exploring… there isn’t a map. That’s the whole darn point. So it’s going to be scary, and unfamiliar, exhilarating, and exciting. New worlds are like that. There could be danger there. There could also be amazing things. But you won’t ever get to them if you only want your familiar guides to lead you. Perhaps your comfort in your previous guides is misplaced in this journey. It doesn’t make them wrong… it makes them wrong for this journey. Like wearing 6-inch stiletto heels to do a triathlon. Don’t get me wrong… them pumps have a place and a time… but not in that journey.
Your energies and guides are not for always. They are for now. And now changes. So your guides and life compasses must upgrade too. When you are exploring you are no longer using the known maps… You are making them. And that’s not a bad thing. But it requires a whole different approach. You must embrace the ideology that your spiritual journey is one that no one has done before you. Because you are you. And you have never been done before but by you. There are no guides when you wish to take your mind and temple down a new spiritual road.
There are others that may have taken their journey down the same ideology, but their map will not work for you. Because of human maps… soul maps… the map to who we are and how we see is ours alone. Our experiences are ours and can never be truly shared so much as experienced concurrently.
Don’t get me wrong, we can share ourselves while we are on our own path, we can share our knowledge about the journey itself, we can even see that others have similar outcomes to their ideological and spiritual exploration… but we are factually alone. That can be scary. It can make us lean too strongly on what feels safe and stunt our efforts of change.
We shouldn’t fear alone. Nor should we continue to use only what we know as our guide to the new so we have a safety net of comfort.
Climbing Our Mountains
Life is a series of bumps and bruises. When you’re scaling a new and momentous mountain in your path you can use the skills your past guides have given you to remain strong and determined in your task. But you cannot hold yourself to familiar outcomes or expectations. Because happiness is a journey, not a destination. You will never arrive at happy. Happy is something you achieve along the way. You can only move forward. The happiness you had yesterday will not be here today even if you are standing still. Because time as a commodity is not traded but surrendered… and like sands through the hourglass, no matter which way you turn it… they will continue flowing until they run out. It’s within the flow that you find happiness.
So be an explorer. A rugged and untrained explorer. Get good at getting comfortable with the unknown. Mine the rocks and mountains along your path, pick the flowers you know and don’t know. But stop seeking solace and guidance in your new world with the repetitions of yesterday that left you longing for change, to begin with. Change starts when we recognize that the answers we seek are found in the questions themselves. The real challenge is accepting the unknown and using our past skills to handle the ups and downs along that unknown thorny path.
Don’t give up on a path unknown because you don’t have answers you recognize as good possibilities. The best answers will always lead you to even better questions in hopefully a long reoccurring cycle driving you to new and amazing experiences. That there is the true definition of spiritual and emotional exploring.
This view from an autistic mind may not always meet you where you are at, but know without a doubt that I will continue to be here watching your journey from the inside of my mind's eye. I am a champion of journeys unknown and look forward to being here each and every day along with your path.
Blessed Be,
You are here, you are loved, and you are courageous.
G
https://spiritualfitnessonthego.com
