Note: This month I am sharing articles written by people who impacted me during the year 2011 and from whom I’ve learned a lot. Hope you enjoy the selection. Today’s article is by Ursula Jorch
A woman became lost in the jungle. She could find no landmarks, and the trail had vanished. In her wandering, she stumbled on a clearing with a single small hut. Relief!
She asked the tall woman inside the hut to lead her out of the jungle. Tall Woman nodded and plunged right into the bush on the other side of the clearing.
After about an hour of thrashing their way through the dense growth, the wanderer became worried and asked Tall Woman, are you sure that this is the path?
The woman replied, in this place, there is no path. In this place, I am the path.
When I’m confused or uncertain, I find myself tempted to seek a guide. Someone to point me in the right direction. A worn path where others have gone before me, so that I can be sure that I’m going the right way and I can follow pretty much unconsciously, without a lot of thought. The degree to which the path is worn tells me clearly that it’s the right way to go.
Is it really the ‘right’ way? Or is it just where everybody else has gone?
What if you believe, as I do, that every path is unique, as every person is unique? At first, that sounds great! I’m unique, special! The essence of me can never be repeated!
Then, the true meaning of that sinks in.
As I am unique, so is my path. That means that there is no worn path, no trail to follow. And therefore, there is no guide.
Oh crap! Now what do I do?
I’m finding as I go further and further down this road of a reinvented life, further down this path of my own making, that I have fewer and fewer illusions that there are guides. No one has done this in this particular way. No one has trod this particular trail. And therefore, no one can show me the way.
That’s the bad news.
And it’s also the good news.
The good news is that only I can find the way. Only I know what the next step is, and then the step after that. Only I decide what is right for my own life. Only I make the choices needed to realize my life fully.
And despite the lack of guides, I am not alone. In fact, I’ve never been less alone in my entire life.
While no guides are available for what I am doing, what I have found in abundance are companions. These are people who join me, some for a short time, some for the long haul, and walk with me.
Even though I might ask them, they don’t show me the way. They may try, but it eventually becomes clear that they can’t. That’s not a failing on their part. It’s just the way it is.
What the most genuine companions do show me is love and compassion and a clarity of knowing that I will find my own way.
This experience is not only true for me. We all have a path, the path of our lives. We can follow the well-trodden way, unconsciously following where others have gone before us.
Or we can choose to consciously make our own path. We can choose to make that path in a powerful way.
In that place, you are the path.
And if you choose the conscious path, I can promise you, you will not be alone there.
(my original comment to this article posted at Ursula’s blog) Love this article by Ursula. I am sitting here all excited, your words resonate so much with me. I’ve been finding bits and pieces of what you wrote about throughout the last year and now I am becoming aware of this truth.
The most amazing aspect of my findings has been in my parenting approach. I began to realise that this is all true in our relationship with our children “What the most genuine companions do show me is love and compassion and a clarity of knowing that I will find my own way.”
It is an amazing approach to parenting that I am mastering right now, and it is so different to how I’ve been raise and am often told to do. We are often told that we should lead our children, tell them what to do until a certain age. And what is it – 18, 21, 14?? Often by then people lose the ability to trust themselves and need to start learning about this trust from scratch, like I am doing it now!
What we are finding at the moment that we can trust our children from birth – we have toddlers now and we obviously make sure that they don’t run to the middle of a busy road, but most of the time I find myself just watching them and learning FROM them 🙂