Spirited Being

Don’t try to encourage others. For all you know, some may need to go down first before they are ready to be lifted up. Instead, be you. As simply and as gently as you can. Be you in this moment, in the context of your immediate relationships, amidst the details of your present surroundings, listening deeply, and learning carefully what is actually required of you, here and now. Allow yourself to be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love, as Rumi recommended, not enticed by the maxims and edicts of others who are unfamiliar with the beautiful chaos swirling in your heart. Don’t try to be an inspiration. Inspiration cannot be manufactured. For another or yourself. Instead, commit to the mystery of your own unfolding. No matter what you may gain or lose. Your becoming is happening anyway, but brining awareness to your process nurtures it, and indirectly invites others to the same, grounding us in the true and only source of spirited being.

When you feel depleted, far from who you are, or at least the person you thought you were, with the sun setting on a previously held sense of identity, meaning, or purpose, you are likely at a threshold of breathtaking possibility—the burgeoning of new being—along with the inevitable birth pangs of an essential loathing, squirming, and listlessness with the current incarnation of your life. Whatever you do, don’t force the process. Becoming happens freely, of its own accord, in its own timing. Instead, embrace emptiness, treasure nothingness, and allow space for death and dying, as absence is the indispensable antecedent to your new form of flourishing and presence. Trust what is unfolding within you.