Apr 25
In the moment of alignment where the mind whispers in, give your heart the mic.
On the precipice of discomfort, I find myself seeking the familiar.
I feel myself attempting to shyly turn away from the new and the unknown, and likely the better. I feel myself bracing in preparation of what lies on the other side of the hill. I feel myself glancing back to the things that I know are behind me. The things that are outgrown but predictable and through their predictability safe. The things that provide protection from rejection.
The mind works to keep us within the bounds of what we know because what is known is foreseeable and therefore without threat to the ego.
Even though we feel and know and believe that the best things for us lay on the other side of the hill of growth, the ego operates to keep us within the safe space before the climb.
We feel and know and believe that we must not only reach but scale past the point where all that lies behind us is still visible and what awaits us over the top is out of sight.
In that moment, we must choose to walk toward what we cannot see, what we cannot imagine, in order to experience and play and create with life in the fullest capacity.
We discover the sweet spot in this process when we notice the mind and can reassure the incessant chatter and identify more with trust than with worry.
So many of us get stuck right on that edge and choose the comfort and the known over the creation and the potential.
I understand this tendency because I have experienced countless miracles that are the sole result of the blind trust that comes with the discovery of alignment and flow.
Yet, each time I am faced with the option to stay swaddled in the known or soar into creation, all the doubts and the planning and the worries of my mind seep in and nearly trick me into complacency.
Even with the strongest evidence and backing possible, my own experience, I question whether I should climb to the summit.
The questions of my mind aim to lure me back to what is known. The worries aim to secure me in the comfort and margins of self-doubt.
Like a trail of breadcrumbs, those questions and worries lead me back to a place where I remember the miracles, or perhaps the things that become normal when you follow and trust your own guidance.
I stand in that clearing, face lifted toward the sky, and ask myself if I should do the thing that dances between security and uncertainty. The thing that feels scary but will bring me to the other side of the hill.
The answer is always the same: of course.
Of course I should reach the summit.
Once realigning with growth and placating the tapes of predictability played by my mind, my inner dialogue changes as the mic is passed from the mind to the heart.
My heart speaks to me differently. She understands the ego and its desires and reminds me of the place where the truest joy of life resides: right on the other side of where the ego wants to keep me.
She speaks:
How dare you limit yourself by what is known? After all, wasn’t what is now known once unknown?
And when it was unknown, were you able to envision any of it being as sweet as it is now?
And if you created this beauty by having the courage to trust, the courage to summit, what else awaits you on the other side?
What awaits you at the next peak?
How dare you limit yourself to only one mountain of the limitless range before you?
The whole range, more vast than you can dream, endless peaks and valleys and summits and climbs and vistas created just for you, is yours for the taking.
All you have to do is say yes.
Of course, yes.