Most often my answer to uncertainty is education. Don't know what to do next? Take a class. Want to change careers? Get another degree. Feel unsettled in my life? Go back to school.
Then, eventually, I get to the point where I know I can stop looking outside myself for the answers. I know what I want to know if I pay attention and listen.
It came to me this week that I am at that point now in my spiritual life.
This is the final week of Buddha Chick Flight School. It has been an interesting twelve weeks, not because of new information I have learned but because of what I have learned about myself. My response at the beginning of each new module has been Oh, I know this. I have read/heard/believed this before. This is a review, so let me see what I think about it now. Then I read further and realize that I have ideas and opinions about the subject that make sense to me. I finish the lesson and feel grounded in the material and satisfied that I know what I want to know.
Again and again I have done this over the last 35 years. In my search for all I can know I invariably go one step further than I need to, but I don't know that until I get there and realize I already know...
and that what I needed was to trust myself and the knowledge I already have.
It's interesting that this lesson became crystal clear as I finished another course on being calm, clear, and wise. I was already feeling those things, so what more did I want?
As Joanne often says, Own it. That phrase came to me loud and clear this week. I want to own my calm, clarity, and wisdom. I want to own my feelings and trust my responses.
I already know what I want to know. Now I want to live like I believe that.
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6 comments:
Sharon, it's not always easy to truly get to that place, where we live a creed, or lifestyle, or decision, like we believe it. But I've found that making the conscious decision to do so, regardless of doubt, helps it to happen. I think you'll enjoy my post tomorrow, a variation of "own it" that I heard in my musical travels.
Great post, Sharon. Sounds like you've gotten some great material from the class. One of these days I will sign up for that one too. Once I accepted the idea -- for myself -- that life is a journey, not a destination, I started going a bit easier on myself. Sometimes I worry that I'm a "jack of all trades and master of none," but then again, maybe it's really OK if I am. I've learned a lot from everything I've explored ... Keep exploring, Sharon!
This resonates so deeply for me Sharon...and I do believe that trusting what we know is as much a spiritual practice to cultivate as any other...Like being present to the moment at hand, the trust comes and goes...but it returns again. (and passes again) Perhaps "owning it" is more a matter of trusting that "trust" will return, and not something we can hold onto in a permanent way...everything changes moment to moment. This is just what my gut is telling me in THIS moment, it may or may not be true for you.
xo
In sync with this feeling, Sharon. I tend to research a problem with self-help books but this week I looked on my bookshelf for books I've already read and reacquainted myself with the wisdom therein.
I have heard so many people talk about the practice being a simple forgetting and remembering again. I've found that the more I arrive at remembering with just a simple, "Welcome back!", rather than believing all the crazy stories in my head, the more I am able to rest in the center than fly on the periphery.
So glad you already know what you need to know. Welcome back!
Trust in the knowledge that we already have. There is so much to be learned in those words, Sharon.
Hugs.
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