What is yo
ur life path? And don’t feel embarrassed if you don’t have an easy answer to the question. You and I might both be suspicious if someone had too pat an answer.
But still, what is your life path? For me, it definitely includes the places I’ve been, the people I’ve met, and the work that I’ve done. I can look back at all those things over the course of my life to this point and say, “My life path thus far has been my journey through all that.”
Through all those experiences, there is a deeper journey. When I think about a life path, I think about these questions:
- What am I looking for?
- What am I attempting to experience, even when I’m not thinking about it?
- What am I attempting to create?
- What am I trying to heal?
- Who or what am I serving?
One of the first spiritual teachings I encountered was this: Radical acceptance of the circumstance in which you find yourself.
I have found great freedom in that teaching. The fear is that if you accept what’s happening in your life right now, you will be confined by it forever. I’ve learned that that’s not what really happens. The truth is that no circumstance is static. All of Creation is moving.
From the human perspective, radical acceptance brings a person to an experience of a powerful stillness. In that stillness, you move through space and time, watching your path unfold before you. You end up living in your own bubble of creative intention and activity. And you find that you haven’t just accepted a circumstance. You have embraced your life path. You have landed more fully in the space-time continuum being more fully yourself. The way is unfolding before you and it is doing so without the necessity of you controlling it.
On this journey, I have such intense desire. There is so much that I would like to see happen—happiness for family and friends, the success of my teaching, the thriving of Sunrise Ranch, where I live. All that desire is ablaze in my heart and soul. Yet I know that now, in this moment, for my life journey to unfold as it should, it needs my peace, my stillness, my willingness to simply be present and embrace the life path that is unfolding before me.
I know the magic of entertaining the great possibility for my own life and for this world in which I live. For me, God does not have any meaning unless He is God the Possible—King of potentiality for my life path and for Planet Earth. I entertain that God every day in my thoughts and in my heart.
My life is in service to that potentiality. It is important to remind myself that the potentiality does not belong to me. The determination of how the path will unfold before me does not belong to me. Even the very power of Creation that I feel so passionately moving through me is not mine.
I am the one walking the path. Without me, there would be no way for all the potentiality I touch to manifest. Without me, there would be no path.
This is what it means to me to embrace my life path. I know the power of this process. I have witnessed the magic of Creation in my life—all kinds of wonderful people joining together to create something beautiful. I’ve also been willing to endure the darkest night when that is where my path took me. Radical acceptance. I feel the honor of having a life path that is mine and the joy of embracing it, whatever it is, as it unfolds before me.
There is a solitary nature to this life journey. Yet in embracing my path, I know the joy of love and friendship with others who are doing the same. For me, that is far better than wandering around aimlessly in the forest with a group of people, no matter how large.
How about you? What is your life path? I encourage you to embrace it by being wholly present now, watching what unfolds before you while you entertain the God of possibility. Let that God be present with you now. Create with that power and let the path show itself before you.
These are my meditations on what it means to embrace my life path. I’d love to hear from you on this blog if you care to share your own.
Thank you for this David.
I was asked some time ago by someone who was concerned that I was “too busy” and should slow down – “Do you do what you do to give yourself a sense of meaning or just because you enjoy it?”
That gave me pause for thought and then I could honestly answer that it was in fact both, except that I would not agree that my life path gives me a sense of meaning but is the avenue through which I manifest my meaning and of course that is enjoyable.
From that vantage point then all that I do has the potential to manifest meaning and then it is a matter of what meaning do I choose to manifest?
It is a privilege beyond price to have some sense of the fact that I have something unique to bring to the world and that if I do not bring it, no one else can. That of course is true of us all and it saddens me when I meet someone who does not accept that this is true, even though their chosen path is not bringing them happiness and fulfillment.
Our conditioning does not generally emphasize the magnitude of our significance. It is not a matter of ego but of the relief that is contained in the truth of knowing that we are all here on purpose.
Knowing that and accepting that no one else can play my part for me but that I have many spiritual companions in human form who are taking on their own true life paths too brings great joy.
So true, Maureen. The perspective from which we see our life path makes all the difference.
Amazingly written david. Yes it’s sometimes hard to determine what is oneself’s life path. Sometimes we chose the hard path of life instead of the easy one. It’s important to have God in our lives and to have his power be with us.
I agree, Adam. And if we want God’s power in your life, we have to yield to it and open to it. That’s my experience.
Amazing article about life path David. Sometimes it’s hard to deal with situations that are in our life path. But with God’s power in ourselves, we can overcome whatever the problem is.
I have found myself sometimes so busy, & stressed by everyday life that I have to make myself just stop, & breathe! Going outside, & getting in a quiet place, starts bringing peace back into focus…& talking to God may not bring immediate answers, but it allows us to listen, answers DO arrive!
So beautiful, JoAnn! Real spiritual practices are so simple and so effective. Thank you for sharing yours.