“To draw the most from life, you must be aware that absolutely anything can contribute to it. Inspiration comes from all directions.. you need alert antennae to sense how continuously your soul is communicating with you. The instinct that says “something is out there waiting” is valid. You stand at the pivot point between the known and unknown. Your task is to reach into the darkness and pluck out the next thing that will be meaningful.
Some people avoid the task by repeating the known over and over. .. Your soul anticipates what you need, and it lays out hints and clues on your path. This is the soul’s subtle form of guidance.
If you tune in with alertness, you’ll feel a sense of vibrancy about the thing you should be doing – it feels right, alluring, seducing, enticing, pleasurable, curious, intriguing, and challenging, all at once.
Wait until your intention is clear… knowing exactly what you want… is the spark that generates everything else, including the big ideas and the great rewards. .. and it depends on simply waiting. Waiting isn’t a passive act; it only looks passive. It involves discrimination… sorting out what feels right from what doesn’t. Much else is involved – anxious searching, the struggle of self-doubt, the lure of grandiose ambitions, … Eventually a clear intent will emerge, and once it does, the invisible forces harbored in the soul will come to your aid. For many people, waiting for a clear intent is so exhausting that they undertake it only a few times.. but with hindsight, one can see that the individuals who held out until a clear intent revealed itself were the lucky ones. Despite stress, peer pressure, and doubt, they had the inner strength to trust that “something is out there waiting”.
The best thing you can do is to go through this process as many times as possible. The fog that shrouds your soul may be thick, but it will clear if you want it to, however long the process takes…” - Deepak Chopra
Reading these words this past weekend, I couldn’t help but recognize from personal experience how every word rang true for me. Sentence after sentence I felt more and more as if I was reading an old diary compared to a book. Oh how wonderful it would have been to read this years ago. But I suppose no amount of inspirational words would have sped up the process.
How long did my process take? Well, if you count from the moment the idea occurred to me, it would have started 12 years ago, but I don’t count that. That was a dream to me, just like living in a big city and working at a fashion magazine was a big dream as well.
Three years.
I have endured the process of “anxious searching, the struggle of self-doubt, the lure of grandiose ambitions..” for three years. But I never gave up, and I never let the shame of changing my mind once again stop me. I didn’t let the comments of people with very little faith seduce me into surrendering. Especially from those that can’t even attend a movie by themselves, let alone move across the world alone. They make a mockery of me and my “flightiness” and I laugh at them in return. Their words are meaningless when combined with their own track record of seemingly “brave acts”. And that’s ok. This has nothing to do with anyone but myself.
I guess I never realized before, that I was enduring a “process”. The anxiety, the confusion, the pain, the dreams that left me heartbroken.. it was all a process. It was my destiny. Call me dramatic it you wish, but the dreams came from nowhere, and the enduring ache that I felt when I awoke was nothing short of breathtaking. I look at this process and feel a fondness of familiarity and love. This was my process, my baby. There is no metal at the end, no solid piece of evidence of a journey endured. It is the ending of one life and the gateway to a new life. I am grateful for the years of confusion and doubt, because it entirely and undeniably makes my world trip something holy and sacred to me and only me. It truly is sacred to me. I’ve never fought so hard for anything in my life. School was a struggle but I had no doubts. To doubt yourself is the worst sickness, because you don’t know where to go and no one can help you find your way.
One of my favorite authors, Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote about the confusion of finding a new life. I have memorized this poem for years simply because confusion is a dear friend of mine. The poem talks of patience and being kind to yourself as you figure out your way. My favorite, however, is the ending. I have welled up in tears when thinking of this as I walk the streets of Chicago, and I challenge tear drops today as I face this new reality. He says to try to “love the questions.. to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day..”
