Well, the simple answer is you know who you are. The more difficult answer is you’ll only come to understand this through the experience of life and living.
How can I explain to you the secrets of the universe that your soul came here for you to know? I can’t. I can only guide you to a signpost of exploration and from there, the journey is on you. It’s in you to decide, ‘how do I want to live my life?’ That’s all we ever really get to do. Decide who we will be in any set of circumstances. Decide what it is we are looking for as an outcome and either surrender or control it.
What we can see and say is that the journey is worth it. What you can see and say is I’m willing to try. I’m willing to explore. I’m willing to know more about me than I’ve ever known before. And if that is the place, I wish to live my life, I’m going to have the eternal supports and recognition of my soul in all my deeper understandings of life and living.
If I were to tell you the story of my journey word for word every step of the way, you would not believe it, it is simply too extraordinary, and too contemptuous, and too contemplative, and too quarrelsome. At some point I just simply had to decide that I was only going to know what it is I am here to do by being who I am. And I let that be the greatest mystery of my life.
How could I know who I am without some level of skepticism and then a willingness to see and say what it is that is important to me? How was I going to redefine my life without knowing there were deeper questions to be asked? And how was I going to do what I always wanted to do in the most extraordinary and powerful way without stepping outside of my comfort limit and stepping into my own sacred space.
Inner wisdom is not a journey for the faint of heart and that’s the simple truth. Everyone that has walked through this journey has been laid waste and gutted along the journey of a higher knowing to get to a point of deep knowing and understanding. Now you can get there in a heartbeat, or you can get there in an hour, or you can get there the lifetime after this one. But this you need to know; you will never get there without walking this path.
And once you decide this journey can be fun instead of treacherous, you’re going to start seeing a new way of being with a whole new set of tools and a whole new understanding. But that’s in you and on you to do. You can’t dabble in self-discovery. You are either in it for the long haul, or you are in it to explore and experience, or you are in it to win it by fighting and kicking and screaming and ripping every door off its hinges, OR you can stop and breath and orient yourself and say, ‘Where am I?’
You will find that the only place you’ve been in this journey is within your own mind. And once you see that. You’re going to say, ‘Holy shit! What just happened there?’ And that’s when your soul path your SolePath is going to show you how you have been perceiving the world through misinformation and a distorted filter from time to time. But also, through the most extraordinary viewing you have ever known, could ever know.
And do you know how I know this? Because this is my soul writing this letter to you. This is my soul saying, ‘I’ve been there, I’ve done that. And I don’t know how it feels to be inside your mind, but I sure know how it feels to be inside mine.’ And mine has seen the battle ground of the fight for wisdom and truth and understanding like I’m slaying dragons and then stopping to eat a peanut butter sandwich beside a river bank, and oh isn’t the flower pretty, it’s my favourite colour.
…and that’s how it’s going to be.
From time to time you are going to feel like you are the driver in this seat and then the very next minute you’re going to be riding the road to ‘I don’t know where the bleep this is going but I’m either going to hang in for the ride and see what there is to see or I’m going to sit at the side bar of my life and never really know what it is I came here to know.
This isn’t about exploring the planet through the inner reaches of the mind. This is about knowing the landscape of your own soul in every direction you can see or feel or come to be in awareness of. Now this is going to feel like I’ve been glued to the ground some days and other days like I can pluck a star from the sky? What’s the difference? The level of the playing field you decide to live your life through.
You can decide today just as easily as tomorrow that there’s something here for you to know or you can walk away, turn a blind eye and say ‘Phew! That was close, I almost learned something about myself today.’
You may not know it or see it or understand it but you have ripped yourself from your perch of comfort and ease and stepped boldly into a new way of understanding the soul in universal alignment with the purpose of living. And that’s an extraordinarily brave thing to do. This ain’t your grandmother’s nightmare or the kid next doors new set of shiny boots. This is you walking your path to purpose and looking through every nook and cranny you’ve never explored before. This is you saying, I’m here and I’m willing to descend to my roots to grow my branches through the rooftops.
And you know what? You’ve already started this journey, so what’s the point of sitting back now and saying I know it all, I’ve already seen the view from here. What’s waiting around the corner for you is the most extraordinary experience of living your soul has ever known but only if you decide you’re willing to go for a walk this way not that way. And you don’t have to be on a steadfast march in this direction, that’s not the point at all. But you do have to make the decision:
Am I willing to know who I am by taking one step off the beaten path and walking through the flower bed instead of alongside it on the sidewalk?
Am I willing to know what it means to me, when I see this exact spot from another direction just for the simple experience of knowing who I am and what I am here to do?
Because you can only know it through the experience of recognition. And you can only see it by looking through the mind’s eye into the heart of your soul. But that’s how you live every day, isn’t it? Not if you’ve never taken a step off the only view you have ever lived your life through.
This is the farthest thing from the drudgery of repetition. Repetition is the safe place to be that you have lived your whole life through. It’s where you wake up in the morning and decide to have the same cup of coffee you’ve always had and then go about your day as you always do, put this pot here, place that coat there, organize that flower bed so all the flowers grow the same direction at the same time. What about that flower that’s shooting off to the right, altering the symmetry of the bouquet of my life? That little sucker is going to go too far one day and either reach for the sun or what?? Snake off the edge to its doom?
Hardly, the only thing that flower is doing is exploring its purpose without the safety net of all the other flowers looking in the same direction. It hasn’t done anything wrong other than be a little disorderly. And let me tell you, a little disorder is what is needed if you’re going to stand taller than the tallest flower when you stand up and reach for the light again. Just like all the other flowers are doing right now, but you’re going to know that you can go so much further, farther, and higher because you grew your roots and went your own way for a while. And that’s what wisdom looks like. Being the tallest flower when the sun comes out to shine on the bright sunny days.
And that’s where you are taking a little peek to the left and the right and that’s all you’re doing. Looking at a new way of being from inside your mind so that you can decide, ‘Yeah I’ve been here before’ or ‘Holy beep, that is the most glorious thing I’ve ever seen. Why have I never seen that before?’ Oh yeah, because I never walked on this path before. That’s it. That’s all.
That’s where you are sitting right now. Do I want to be who I have always considered myself to be? Or, do I want to lay in a new field of knowing and understanding?
The door is open but it’s your choice to step through.
Your choice to linger. Your choice to walk away and look in another direction. But you will always be the one who decides where and when I am going today. You always have been. And that’s all you’re really coming to understand. Why have I made the choices I have made? Who, made them for me, before I decided to make them?
This is as good as it gets some days and then there’s the days that will take your breath away and leave you bursting on the sidewalk longing for one more glimpse of that ….that …that… I don’t know….because I can’t walk your path. But I know what mine has looked like and the places I’d never been and wouldn’t have paid a burnt penny to go again are the places that have put me on solid ground today. I have no waver. I have no doubt. I only have conviction of the heart. And that’s me and my soul united on every front I choose. Every front I walk and every choice I make.
Now some days I leave my soul self sitting at the side of the road waiting for a ride and that’s because I get all up in my head instead of down in my heart. And that’s the way it’s going to be for you from now on. Up in my head is an expression you will know as experiencing the world from a thoughtful expression. And down in your heart is where you’ll know the thoughts that are serving you and not manipulating you. You’ll see where you have allowed yourself to be led through your own path of inquiry without ever sitting down to say what does that mean? What does that mean to me and what does that mean to someone else? Because it’s different. It’s different than you’ve ever know it to be or could have known it to be.
But know you have a new lens of discernment and you’re going to look through the plate glass window from time to time. And your going to get to look through the colourful lens of your soul on the other days when you allow your vision to shift slightly to the left or right of the situation you see in front of you. That’s where I am. I am here. I have allowed myself to look where I have never looked before.
I can’t stress this enough, I’m always going to be who I am, no matter what I think that means. But until I give myself the freedom and opportunity to understand what this looks like through exploration and experience, I’m only going to see a painted view of the river. I’m not going to smell it or feel it or know the sensation of the cool water between my toes that are playing with river rocks. I’m only going to be looking at an impression of somebody else’s idea. And that’s all. I can only know who I am by feel, and by heart, and by taste, and by touch. And you get to decide how that is going to look for you. And if a pretty picture is all you want then you get to stop and say so. But if you want to know the deepest reaches of the human heart and mind, you’re going to have to step forward every day and say we’ll see what this day has in store for me.
This is the Academy of Inner Wisdom not the journey of I’ve seen it all before. Just breathe, you’re safe. The only place you’ve gone is inside. The only place you are exploring is everything you could possibly know and there’s no unicorn party at the end of the road.
Just you saying, ‘Oh, well now…that IS pretty interesting.’
Be Who You Are!
Thoughtfully, ~ Reverend Janice
If you are called to Purpose and fascinated by exploring Metaphysical Philosophy, Personality and the Tao, then subscribe. Request your SolePath at www.solepath.org.
Rev. Janice Brown sp.M (master), CS.p Dean of Academics, The Academy of Inner Wisdom
Janice is an avid fan of metaphysical purpose, congruence and being in expansion. She looks for ways to simplify intangible concepts and bring them home for a place to rest in your heart. Congruence of the Heart and Mind is her life’s work, her purpose and her passion. She is the Dean of Academics at the Academy of Inner Wisdom, SolePath Master Mentor and an ordained Metaphysical Minister through CIMM.
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