Bronnie Ware, a palliative nurse, did a study on the top regrets of people who are on their deathbed. She revealed the most common regret of all: “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
This is the focus of the ‘soul work’ I do with people. Befriending my soul is all about this: learning to be faithful to what I really love, discovering what I am most deeply drawn to, what my deepest and most abiding interest is. When I am able to really shed light on these things, and when I can follow them, be faithful to them, then I can live the life that is true to myself.
This true life, this authentic way of being, is not a static, fixed thing. It’s alive-it moves and flows and evolves. Staying close to the aliveness of this flow requires a lot of me. If I think I’ve got it all figured out I’ll go right back to sleep. It’s amazing how ill-prepared we are in this culture for finding our way back home to this place, to the creative movement of our soul, to the revelation of our deepest yearnings.
Many of the indigenous cultures would take their young people through an intense process of initiation, to help them connect with the unique life their soul came here to live. Sometimes they would lose one of these young people during the initiation. It’s a very intense process, in which each young person makes direct contact with their own core intelligence. A horrified westerner once asked Malidome Some, an African shaman, whose people participated in such practices, “How could you ever allow that to happen?”
He answered, “It’s extremely difficult for us, when we lose one of our young people. We have to deal with a lot of grief and heartbreak. But we take that risk, because we know that a life that is not connected with the depths of being, with the truth of the soul, will not be a happy life. We know that finding the courage to live a true life is what makes that life worth living.”
This is a radically different view of reality than the one we inherit and are taught to believe in our culture. I am not supporting that kind of initiation at all. I simply offer it as something that can shake up our conditioned views about what is most valuable and essential.
As part of this process of connecting with the flow of this deeper, truer life, many indigenous cultures sent their young people off on a ‘soul journey.’ The young person was sent away to wander, far from home, far from everything that is known and familiar. Cutting the ties with everything they had been taught, and with what their community was expecting of them was what allowed them to discover their true way of being—what life was asking of them. Their tribe and their family understood that no-one else can tell you what your soul came here to do. It’s got nothing to do with all that you’ve been taught, no matter how wonderful those teachings may be. Your way is your way-and it has to be discovered in your own depths.
I often invite the people I work with to wander. Wandering is a marvellous practice. One brilliant man I was working with this summer could feel something brand new emerging into his life, but he didn’t know what it was or how to find it. That feeling of ‘tracking a vision,’ of being so close to a new possibility, is very strong for many people these days.
The masculine approach is to stalk the vision, hunt it down until it reveals itself. Sometimes this is a very good way to begin. But there comes a time when the energy of the feminine is required. Hunting and stalking and making all that effort can only take us so far. As Kelle Sparta puts it, “When the divine feminine asks a question, she does not go hunting for the answer. Instead, she invites the answer to find her.”
That’s what the practice of wandering is all about. When I wander, I not only leave my familiar surroundings behind. I leave my habitual ways of being behind as well. I consciously lay them down as an offering to the greater, deeper intelligence that I am inviting into my life. I lay my strategies down, all that I believe I need in order to solve my question. I lay down my linear mind and where it thinks it need to go, what it wants to hold onto.
And I wander, without knowing where I am going or why. I allow myself to be guided, by small clues, by feeling and sensations that I don’t even register when my linear mind is in charge. And as I wander, I listen; I open myself to the vast field of love and intelligence that I am wandering inside of. I soften myself so that information on more subtle levels can be received, in the mind, heart and body.
I can wander on an inner level and I can wander with my body. Wandering is more powerful when my whole being can participate. Imagine taking a whole day, or half a day, to just wander-closing the door and leaving your house, without knowing where you are going.
Wandering is a restorative practice. It’s not full of focused effort. Wandering includes stopping, pausing, resting, sitting, lying down, forgetting everything. It brings renewal, ease and playfulness back into your life. It presses you right up against the mystery. When you don’t know where you are going, something larger and more intelligent than you are finally has the chance to find you.
Being lost is not so bad, really. Any real expression of our creative energy moves through a space of wandering, of chaos, of being lost. Didn’t Jesus say something about this? Maybe he didn’t use the very same words, but the message is clear: “Blessed are the lost, for they shall be found.”
LOST
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree of a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
-David Wagoner
With love,
Shayla
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