Listen, Honor, and Trust

The Union Path

"Listen, Honor, and Trust"

Transcript:

So often it can be so difficult to know what to do. It can be so difficult to know what to try. It can be so difficult to know what to stop doing. Sometimes it's even difficult to know even what we want. We can go through life knowing we want some sort of change, knowing that we want things to be different in some way, but we can't really put our finger on what would actually do that.

What would actually be better, what better actually looks like. And it doesn't stop us from trying. We can try all sorts of different things. We can try all sorts of different ways to change our life, to change aspects of our life. We can develop new habits, we can break old ones. We can try new regimens, we can try new routines.

But if we're trying, if we're doing without really knowing what we're trying to accomplish, without really having a targeted mind, without really having an ideal visualized, a lot of times this effort can be squandered, can be wasted. We can lead ourselves on wild goose chases where we're not only, don't really know where we're going, but we don't really know why we're trying to get there.

And again, oftentimes, or at least sometimes this comes back to not really knowing what we want, knowing that we want change. We want things to be different. We want things to be better. We want to diminish or eliminate the struggle, the suffering. The hard, sharp, prickly aspects of life and just find an existence that feels better, feels smoother, feels a little bit more gentle, feels a little bit more nurturing and affirming, rather than the struggle and strain of beating our head against life, trying to escape the cycles of toil and torment, and reach a point in life where we just feel good.

And we feel good in a way that's not so high maintenance, not so difficult to, not only attain, but seems even harder to keep once we've attained it, to find a bit more effortlessness, to find a bit more flow, to find a bit more fit and comfort in our own life. Well, sometimes this confusion, sometimes this lack of knowing, lack of awareness of either what we want or.

How to achieve what we want is because we've lost touch with life a little bit. We've lost our grip. We've lost our tether, our grounding on life itself because we've forgotten how to listen. We've forgotten how to honor, and we've forgotten how to trust when we find ourselves living solely through the mind, solely through habits, solely through thinking, solely through.

Imitating what others have done solely through trying to imitate what we've done in the past to create the same results, really pulls us out of our intuitive experience of life. Really pulls us out of our ability to listen, our ability to hear what life is really trying to tell us an inability to feel what our life really feels like.

We can get wrapped up in expectations, in plans, in shoulds that we should experience such and such because we are doing the things that lead to that outcome. But of course, expectations in shoulds are not concrete. These are ideas in our minds. Sometimes these are false ideas, or at the very least, sometimes these are faulty ideas.

They don't really contain the whole truth. They don't really have the whole story. They don't really tell us everything we need to know about how to actually get to where we want, how to traverse the path, or even how to find the path that leads to what we actually want. And if we compound this by not actually knowing what we want, then of course that just makes our way harder.

Then it almost seems like it doesn't matter what we do because we don't actually know where we're going. It can be so easy to get lost. It can be so easy to be confused and sometimes in response to this, we just try to accelerate. We try to do more. We try to make the bargain that if we accomplish enough, then surely something will be the right thing.

That if we do everything we possibly can, that if we get done everything we possibly can, surely one of those things will be the right thing. That's just the law of averages. It has to even out one of the myriad and multitude of things we're trying must be the right thing, right? Because we're doing everything we can possibly think of.

But again, this leads us back to just living in our thinking and I think we all have to acknowledge that a life lived entirely in thinking is a very fractional existence, is a very partial existence, is only the things we're currently aware of. Which no matter how aware we are, there's still far much more going on than we think there is.

There's far much more to life than we're currently aware of, and that's always true. That's the beauty of awareness. There's always more to explore. There's always more to discover. There's always more to learn and to know There's always more opportunities to grow. There's always more opportunities to create and experience change, which is what keeps us going.

No matter what kind of situation we're in, there are always opportunities to do and be something different. There's always a chance, there's always hope. There's always a reason to believe that not only things can be different, but things can be better, but when we're just living entirely through our mind when we're just.

Fenced in by only what we're currently aware of. Then we're really only living a sliver of all the possibilities of all the opportunities available to us because we're only living through what we're aware of. We're only living through what we expect. We're only living through what we identify beforehand and then seek.

We're not letting life come to us. We're not letting life speak to us because we're the ones doing all the talking. We're the ones who've developed these magnanimous opinions that not only we know, or at least we try to convince ourselves that we know how things should go, but that that's the way things will go.

And even when our expectations are upset. Even when we don't get what we expect, we're still surprised. We're still diminished, we're still disappointed, we're still hurt. But the real surprising thing is just how surprised we are because of course things happen. We don't expect, of course, we encounter things we didn't bargain for.

Of course, things work out in a way differently. And how we ourselves mapped out things were going to go because we don't know everything, cuz of course we don't. That idea is absurd because things before they happen cannot be known. All that can be known is what has been experienced and what has been experienced has already happened.

But we have to live our life moving forward. No matter how much we want to, no matter how much we want to return to some sort of more comfortable past, even if it's just an idea of how things used to be or how things could have been, it's a very strong attraction. There's a story, very strong pull to just want to go back there to wanting to live life in reverse.

But I think we all know that's not how things actually work. And oftentimes these. Desires, oftentimes us trying to go backwards, us trying to recreate some aspect of creation is where our minds get involved because these sound like problems. The mind is perfectly suited to solve these kind of sound like story problems on a test that if we want to experience such and such, And in the past we've done these various things that seem to have done that well.

Then the obvious answer is just to do the math and do those things again. But then that cuts us off from possibility. That cuts us off from being able to try anything new because what's interesting about trying to recreate the past, Sometimes, maybe oftentimes the things that were most successful that we did were new to us or something we'd never done before.

We'd never tried before that. Very rarely can we achieve or attain or maintain or sustain success by doing the same thing over and over again. That's not usually how things work. Or at the very least, that's not usually how. Important. Meaningful things work. A lot of times. Things like passion and joy and meaning and fulfillment don't really conform and comport themselves to repetition and routine.

A lot of times we discover what we're really trying to get, what really feels meaningful, what really feels important, what really feels fulfilling through doing something novel. They're doing something new. In a lot of ways, we have no choice to move and to grow, we have to change. We have to do something different.

We can't just keep doing the same thing over and over and over again and expect that that will be enough. And sometimes we can achieve a little bit of success with something and decide that that's precisely the way how you do that. And they get locked into doing that over and over and over again. And even despite different results, even despite having that not actually work way more times than it did, we keep doing it because we've identified a pattern.

We've identified something that we would call, that we would label a successful pattern. And again, this is what the mind is really good at. Pattern identification and routine repetition. It's incredible at it. But it's not all the mind can do. It's not that I, in order to live spontaneous, intuitive life, we have to just throw our minds away and just walk around as purely feeling beings and never to think again, never to use any kind of discernment again, never to use any kind of logic again.

It's about having a balance. It's about not getting overweighted on any one particular side. But usually when we get locked into patterns, usually when we get locked into routine, we watch our life stagnate. We watch our lives shrivel that even if we're maintaining the outcomes that we're trying to create, the repetition, the routine removes that bit of magic from life, that bit of sparkle, that joy that we are trying to experience in the first place.

And often we can, we're down to. Routine and repetition because we're trying to protect what we've been able to accumulate and we've trying to protect what we've been able to experience. But again, that's not how it came in in the first place. New experience was created and experienced because we were creative.

We were doing something new, we were trying something new. Often we had no idea if he was even gonna work. Maybe part of us was a little scared. Maybe part of us was a little unsure, but we did it anyway. I think in this way, life can really be a brilliant and beautiful teacher, and we get too reliant on repetition and routine.

Life can nudge us away from this behavior. Life can really try to get us to be creative again. Life can really try to get us to be open again. Life can really try to have us try something new or be more integrated between our thinking and our feeling. Life can really expose and notify when we have gotten outta balance, when we've been living too much in our minds, when we've been relying a little too much on willpower, when we've been grinding a little too hard and we've stopped flowing with what is.

When we backed ourself into a corner of resistance and effort and force, which is largely pushing against what is. We've built conflicts and quarrels and umbridge with life itself. Instead of moving with life, we've intentionally stopped to flow in the dynamism of life because we're trying to create one specific thing.

But we can find our way out of this mode. We can find our way out of this sort of behavior, and that's precisely by learning how to listen and honor and trust what life is telling us. That can be a difficult lesson to learn, especially if we've really sharpened our ability, really reinforced our beliefs.

That everything we want is achieved through hard work. That everything we have, we achieve through struggle and toil and pain. That it's been the blood, sweat, and tears. It's been the determination, it's been the grit that is delivered to us, what we currently have that has given us a life experience that we currently have.

And of course that's true, but what if we could achieve similar goals? What if we could attain similar? Desires without all that suffering, without all that toil, without all that struggle. Well, to some of us, there's a part of the mind that wants to immediately reject this idea because there's a part of the mind that believes not only is there honor and suffering, but all pleasure, all achievement, all fulfillment, all meaning has to be earned.

There's a price we have to pay. For all of it, that there is no free lunch. Nothing is given freely that we, ourselves inherently as beings are entitled to nothing. Inherently, we deserve nothing. Everything has to be earned. Everything has to be proven that we deserve it before we can have it, or at the very least, before we can keep it in these beliefs.

Can often separate us from the very things that we're trying to create and experience because it creates a belief that ends up being a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. That if we ourselves don't believe that we deserve something because we haven't quote unquote earned it, then that lack of belief, then that lack of being, whatever it is that we want, will usually cause whatever that is.

The float away will usually be the root cause of ultimately us losing it. Cuz try as we may, we cannot override our own beliefs, at least over the longer term. And we see this reflected throughout our life, that our life is a mirror. A life is showing us what we really believe in, what values we really hold.

What we really know to be true about ourselves, about others, about the world itself. We tend to see, we tend to experience what we expect and our expectations are based on our beliefs. And really the only way to change our beliefs, we want to have a different experience, is to learn something new, is to experience something new.

And that's where these ideas of relearning, of reintegrating. How to listen, how to honor and how to trust is so important because if there's a specific change that we wanna create in our life, maybe we want a different type of situation. Maybe we want to experience something different. Maybe there's just some sort of change that we're trying to create.

And we've tried, and we've tried and we've tried and we've worked and we've worked and we've looked at every plan, every formula, every recipe. Everyone's idea on how to achieve this, and so far this hasn't worked. All of our work, all of our effort, all of our toil, all of our struggle hasn't amounted to the change that we're trying to create.

Well, if that's the case, what if we tried something different? What if we tried to learn something new? What if we tried to do something new through learning how to listen through learning how to get quiet and listen to life? Listen to what life is really telling us. Listen to ourselves. What do we really want?

How does what we're doing really feel of all the various aspects of our life? What does our life actually feel like? What do we want and what don't we want? Are we actually listening to ourselves? Are we actually feeling our feelings? Are we actually living and experiencing our own life, or are we merely just processing the experience of our life through ideas, through ideas that we've developed over time, through beliefs that other people have given us, or things that we've decided to believe?

Are we actually living and experiencing our life directly? What it's really like, what we're really doing, what we're really getting out of it, what things really feel like where we're really going. Are we actually grounded in the awareness of what's actually happening? Are we really listening? Are we really listening while shedding our preconceived notions, our prejudices?

Of how things should be and we're focused and paying attention and taking in and being aware of how things actually are. And of course there's always more of this that we can do. We can never really be completely present and aware all the time. That's not how the human animal works. At least that's my experience.

But is there an effort there? Is there a trying There. Is there the attempt to really inhabit, really be present in our own life and where we are listening, where we are really truly able to hear, are we actually honoring what we hear? Are we actually taking in what we learn? Are we giving it it's due attention, it's due respect?

Are we actually honoring. What we know are we actually honoring our own experience? And from there, how much do we trust what we know? How much do we trust life itself? How much do we trust that we actually have a place here? We actually have a path here. We actually have a reason for being that. Meaning is not only real, but there's meaning for us.

There's a purpose. We have a purpose, and life has a purpose in unfolding that to us. How much do we trust ourselves? How much do we trust others? Is trust a difficult concept for us? Is it a difficult place for us to be? Is that a difficult state for us to inhabit? And if we find any of these things challenging, if we find listening, honoring and trusting, challenging, at the very least, if we find them themselves untrustworthy or ineffective or unreliable, and of course we would resort to things like willpower.

Of course, we would result to things like routine. Of course, we would let the mind take control, because if we're not trusting, Our feeling aspects. We're not trusting our feeling, experience of life and what else is there. But if we have gotten ourself to this place, or we're not listening, we're not honoring, and we're not trusting, and we find ourselves frustrated by either not actually getting what we want, not really living the life we want, kind of getting stuck in frustration or stagnation or just routine and repetition.

It's worthwhile to try something different. It's worthwhile to maybe start to play with the idea that getting what we want shouldn't actually be that hard. That on some level we want what we want. Deep down the things that are really important to us, because we're actually supposed to have them, we're actually supposed to experience that because a part of that.

Is a part of us. We're already bonded to it. We are already a part of it, and that's why the desire is so strong. Or at the very least, that's why not experiencing these things is so uncomfortable because it's like a piece of us is missing. We are incomplete somehow because we've lost a part of ourselves, and yet we're aware of what that missing part is and we can hear.

That part calling to us. We can hear that part of us beckoning us towards it. And this is the perfect example of how to integrate these ideas. If we're listening and then we can hear these desires, we can hear this poll, we can hear this call, then we can learn to honor it. We can learn to honor it because it is a part of us.

And so on some level, it is important for us. It is vital for us to actually experience, and because of that, we can trust it. We can trust that not only is this right for us, but we can trust that the path shouldn't need to be so effortful. We can trust that we can know what we need to do along the way.

We can trust that life doesn't need to be so hard. That the good things in life don't need to require toil and struggle. That if we can listen, we can honor and we can trust. A far more pleasant path will show itself, and the walking of that path will be far less effortful, far less defined by unpleasantness, by misery, by struggle, by toil, by pain.

But we have to listen. We have to honor and we have to trust. We have to let go of some of our rigid ideas. We have to let go of some of our rigid expectations. We have to let go of our beliefs that a good life is overly hard. We have to let go of the rigid belief that we can only have what we want, if we suffer enough.

If we work hard enough, if we toil and struggle enough, we can identify what matters to us. We can identify what's important to us. We can identify what we really want and know that because those things are a part of us, that we will be led to them. We will know it because the path will feel familiar, because we're feeling a part of ourselves.

We can feel our way towards a reunion with this missing part of ourselves through that resonance, because the path will feel like the outcome. And if the outcome feels like us, feels like a more idealized, more perfect, more large, more grand, more full, more complete version of us, and the path will feel like us too.

It will feel familiar. We'll feel at home. It won't feel alien or foreign. We'll know it when we walk it because it'll feel on some level, like we've walked it before, like we've been there before, cuz we're sensing and perceiving ourselves and we just keep going. We just keep moving towards what we actually want.

We keep moving towards what we really want deep down because we know that's already a part of us. Even if it's been a missing part of us, or at the very least we perceive it as a void within us. That reunion is found by following the familiar, by following the comfortable, by following the things that feel like us, that feel like they fit.

By using our intuitive sense to take one step at a time, knowing ultimately the path that we follow will illuminate and show itself because it will feel familiar, it will feel right, and we can honor the signs and the clues and the feedback that we get along the way, and we can trust that not only we're on the right path.

That we'll eventually get where we're going. We can trust our instincts. We can trust our intuition. We can trust that if we let ourselves go, we will be led to where we want to go. That if we put down a resistance, if we stop fighting, if we stop quarreling, if we stop refusing to go, we'll naturally be drawn.

To Reunion will naturally be drawn back to the missing or the dormant aspect of ourselves to who and what we really are. Because we know, we know what that feels like. We know what that familiarity feels like. We know ourselves, we know what we feel like, and so we know when we encounter missing or absent parts of ourselves.

We know when we've encountered these missing parts of ourselves. We know when we've been able to reunite with these parts of ourselves because we feel like ourselves only more, only greater, only bigger, only grander, only more complete. And we don't have to earn this reunion. We don't have to earn this reunification because we already are what we already are.

A lot of times the main thing we have to do is just stop fighting. Just stop. Resisting is just go, just flow. Just be put one foot in front of the other, one step at a time, following what feels right, listening to our lives, paying attention to what we encounter, what things are actually like, honoring that information, putting it into practice.

Continuing to follow it and trusting that it's true, trusting that it'll lead us ultimately where we want to go. And by listening and honoring and trusting, we will walk the path of our full and complete life.