Find Your Truth
“Open your mind, allow your feelings to be expressed, to be pushed out, and your heart will neither break nor burst, but be a free-flowing channel of the life energy in your soul.” — Neale Donald Walsch
The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard said that life is not a problem to be solved; it’s a mystery to be experienced. Contained within that message lies a conceivable reality if you are willing to embrace it. The principle underlying most self-help guidance is to surrender control on how circumstances will play out. The need to influence conditions is an illusion since we have limited control afterall.
What if underneath our desire for control lies the need for safety? It is widely held that what we want and what we need are distinctly opposed. Upon closer examination, our desires are obscured by past conditioning to maintain a sense of security. Yet open any news bulletin and we’ll see how little control we have within the natural order of events. Jamie Smart writes in his book Clarity: Clear Mind, Better Performance, Bigger Results how our mind creates and witnesses reality at the same time: “In your waking experience of reality, your mind continuously creates and perceives a world simultaneously… So well that you don’t feel your mind doing the creating.”
The creating he refers to functions beneath the surface of the subconscious mind. Through the neuroscience of freewill, it takes 300 ms to evoke a response from our nervous system, demonstrating the updating of working memory. At 500 ms we are thinking about what we saw for the first time. In the context of free will, our mind is one step ahead of our nervous system before we intend to act.
So how does this relate to gaining clarity on what matters most? The mind is notorious for pulling us in different directions. To pierce the essence of our existence, we must surrender our self-fabricated story and allow the truth to emerge, beneath the rubble of misconception. Yet, for many to discard their long-held beliefs is painful as throwing money down the drain. To gain clarity, we connect with our core self which knows the best path to take and uncover our truth along the way.
The late Dr. David Hawkins spoke of finding one’s truth and living it as best we can. Living our truth may oppose others and even annoy them. Yet to support a distorted view of reality because it supplicates to their needs is deleterious to our potential. “Living an authentic life is probably the most challenging thing a human being can endeavour to undertake because it is not the way of the world, but it is the way of the heart that connects you to what is real, what is meaningful, and what is eternal,” affirms author and my mentor Dennis Merritt Jones in Your Redefining Moments: Becoming Who You Were Born to Be. I find it helpful to re-examine my purpose when I am pulled in different directions. Do I want to pursue my deepest desires or be at the mercy of others and live an inauthentic life?
Discover What Matters Most
“Nothing ever becomes real until it is experienced.” — John Keats
Ultimately, I want to live my calling, my purpose and truth as much as life will allow me. This does not mean I won’t encounter situations to test my resolve. Knowing life is a mystery to be experienced, I trust as long as I take daily action toward my dreams, I am moving in the right direction. It’s apparent that life offers no assurances. Clarity is apparent when we direct our inner compass toward that which we long for, instead of waiting for external conditions to dictate our future.
Many people believe life is done to them instead of lived through them. This subjective view of reality diminishes their personal power. Life invites us to take proper action and matches it with the right opportunities to advance us to the next stage. The Determinist view states that life functions within the container of a self-organising system. Experience and wisdom has taught me to stay attentive to the signs and symbols which play out in my life. These signs lead me to connect with my inner wisdom and correct my course if I veer off direction.
How will I know when I veer off course? My actions become mechanical and devoid of inspiration. I find myself stuck instead of Navigating my life’s purpose. Problems arise and as Albert Einstein reminds us: the same mind that creates those problems, is not the same mind which solves them. “Attention is valuable because it’s not just an act of focusing your mind on a single point, it is the bringing of your very essence, your soul — the most valuable thing you have — fully into the moment, to perceive with clarity,” affirms author and intuitive counsellor Penney Peirce.
To discover what matters most means to live the questions we put forth. What we believe was once important, is an incomplete perception of reality pulling us in a direction not of our choosing. We can be pulled by our troubles or we can lead with our solutions. The latter invites us to find our own North Star, as author Martha Beck writes in her book. To have life imposed upon us restricts us living an authentic life. Our authenticity is the one true freedom awarded us at the moment of conception. It is a Carte blanche with no conditions other than we embrace it wholeheartedly.
I enjoy psychotherapist David Richo’s perspective in, The Five Things We Cannot Change: And the Happiness We Find by Embracing Them in which writes of the need to trust our inner guidance for it knows exactly what we need: “You can learn to trust that there is a sane, wise, and nurturant resource within you. In fact, the more you know what you really want, the less desperately you need it. This happens because your self-esteem, confidence, and clarity grow.” It is with that knowing we arrive full circle to Søren Kierkegaard’s sentiments to embrace the mysteries of life through experience. Only then can you gain clarity on what matters most amid the pursuit of excellence.
Originally published at Medium