Image by Alice Popkorn on Flickr.
As a child, I was often told that my dreams weren't possible, and let's just say my childhood wasn't great.
By my late teens and early 20s I was an absolute mess, replete with health problems, binge drinking, bad relationships, and legal trouble. I struggled to make sense of things as I attempted to clean up the mess after my last DUI (I had three total in nine years), and after much soul-searching and work to turn things around, I began to piece together a coherent understanding as to why I'd fallen so hard.
I got starkly honest with myself, returned to my journaling, and worked on my health. Sought to connect spiritually in order to find answers. What I observed was a stuckness that permeated my life. Every part of it.
I felt trapped in every possible way.
What is this inertia that seems to control every aspect of life? It's so cramped, panicked, disillusioned. How do we overcome it? First, we must admit that we aren't failures for feeling this way and being stuck.
There is a good reason for these feelings to come up -- we've been ignoring the cries of soul.
As children, we weren't given the whole story when advice was offered. People, old and young, bewildered us with their beliefs and mental limitations, and because we were young and impressionable, we took on their wounds as our own. Our wide-open vistas diminished by adulthood until only small portholes remained, as we subtly learned to accept the status quo version of what we could and couldn't be.
We've been domesticated.
School programmed us to sit still, memorize, and repeat, never daring to ask why we felt so depressed and stuck, even then. When educational funds got cut, they eliminated art, music, and dance.
I mean, why would we need creative outlets?
So many of us simply accept that health struggles, depression, emotional numbness, and the trapped life are just how things go. The truth of it, though, is that these symptoms have manifested so as to relay messages. These messages come from the depths of our souls.
We are creative, limitless beings by nature. The soul cannot be stifled for long before it begins to cry out.
You might have believed up to now that you were alone in your misery. You're not. You may have been convinced that discomfort and struggle was just part of life. It's not. Perhaps you've been told that it's no good even trying for what you desire, as you're more likely to experience disappointment than success.
That, my friend, is up to you.
Our civilization is on the precipice of a spiritual revolution. We're ready for change. Sick of entrapment and struggle. Prepared to make our way into the new, conscious economy by learning to trust the small voice within.
We're done taking orders, and we're ready to pave our own way. There's just one small issue holding us back. We're not sure how.
We don't only need help with money and career; we're struggling with myriad health maladies. We're exhausted, drained, depressed. We need assistance with relaxation. We're overbooked and stressed to the point of giving up.
Focusing on all those unrelated complications then brings up the issue of needing to seek out such a variety of "experts" that by the time we've finished researching and collecting and digesting information about one thing, it's time to move on to the next.
It presents us with a perpetual loop of struggle and very few workable solutions. With such information overload, how can we be expected to find our right path other than through sheer luck?
Simple. We stop looking "out there," and begin to cultivate a relationship with what's "in here."
The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.
-- Ferdinand Foch
The emotion and the literal lack of motion we're experiencing are here to notify us that it's time to change. To move toward the life we are meant to live.
There's free choice, so we're not limited in how we choose to pursue our ideal lives. Living from soul isn't meant to be restrictive, but the alternative of settling for 'what's available' and living on automatic certainly is.
We're creators. We're here to create and expand and grow.
We've got limitless potential if only we begin to access it -- to act. We must take action habitually to grow and create and truly live. Without it we lack zest, there's no passion. We're choosing to remain stuck and passionless when in fact the emotions churning beneath are the perfect indicator that our passion hasn't disappeared. No, it wants desperately to emerge, if only we'd give it the chance. There is a natural desire to burst forth from the cocoon, to transform, and fly.
Expansion, we desire it. Creation, it's our calling. Growth -- without it we succumb to the alternative, death. We die inside.
But we can opt for life, and allow our small, still voice to give us direction to the path of our dreams. We can begin to acknowledge that all life is sacred, that the divine voice exists in us all. We have the option to change, to yield to our heart's desires.
At its core, change is who we are. We've forgotten that crucial aspect of ourselves. It's time to awaken to the call of soul.