I've been thinking about this concept for a few weeks now and I believe it is a big key to maintaining a lifestyle of peace. Living a congruent life - where I engage as many of my faculties (mental, emotional, spiritual etc.) as I can in the pursuit of a specific goal or way of 'being' must be a major key in obtaining the desired end. Personally, I am realizing how much of my life has been lived out of obligation. 'Should,' 'must,' 'have to' have been common expressions in my self-talk but I'm seeing how dis-empowering thoughts like that actually are. Living with a clear purpose that I am actively able to 'engage' with on multiple levels of my being gives me not only a sense of vision and motivation for my future, but also a sense of freedom. If I don't actively live my life, life will just happen to me.
I'm not sure how a person could truly live a peaceful life apart from living a congruent life. Obviously, that may require time spent in discovering what your deepest values actually are and then building from the ground up, so to speak, so that your outward actions don't disagree with what is really important to you. I'm definitely 'pro' writing a personal life mission statement and even though I regularly 'tweak' mine, the underlying values are still the same. I see experiencing an abiding peace in my life as directly related to my ability to have as many aspects of 'me' lined up and in agreement with each other as possible. I don't mean this to sound like a big 'striving' session. In fact, the further I go, the more I am learning to 'settle down' into things that are already mine. So much of what life has to offer doesn't seem to be in the 'getting' but rather in the 'being' and then from that state of being, letting what's already there naturally 'flow' out. I'm finding this hard to explain because the bulk of what I'm learning about peace is difficult for me to put into words. I initially thought this blog would be easy to write because I am so excited about this journey that I'm on, but because this is such a personal experience for me, I feel like telling other people what they should or shouldn't do in order to know the things I'm talking about for themselves seems prescriptive and that's not what I want to do. I guess if something I say here inspires you to go on your own journey, then great, but it will be just that - your journey, with your experiences, your perceptions, your challenges and your victories. Perhaps you've already started and are further down the track than I am. For me, all I can say is that my life is truly getting better and better everyday and I can't wait to see what is up around the next bend. It's THAT good. :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment