A close friend is going through a time. Many of us have been there: that place where old habits catch up to us and we are shunted onto new pathways—if we are to survive, and most certainly if we are to thrive. These crossroad experiences are painful, but they are also what transformations are made of; they are what turn us wise. Looking back, most of us wouldn’t trade them though they involved humiliating mistakes, costly failures, wear and tear on our bodies, archaeological layers of loss. Those who are too afraid to embrace the humiliations and failures run from these crossroads and often live diminished, heart-shrinking lives.
When I think about the pattern in my own life, I am transported to the early 2000s and the years spilling out from that time. I’d found myself in a marriage and life that didn’t have staying power. Yet it was a marriage to a wonderful man. Over a few confusing years, I reckoned with the upheaval on the horizon through a combination of reflection and recklessness. As I desperately moved to build a life that felt livable, I tore many things apart. Demolition before reconstruction. Death before rebirth. A life showdown with shame, dishonesty, perfectionism, illusion, ambition, and distrust that made me slightly dangerous to myself and those around me. I tell the story in my memoir.
Nowadays, as I walk with the aforementioned friend as a spiritual companion, I’m transported to those years; and the over-the-shoulder perspective I have grants me compassion, even as this friend’s mistakes cost me personally—excruciatingly, to be honest. It is simply impossible for me not to see my own mistakes mirrored back at me, or to see a certain inevitability in the arc of descent and rebirth this friend is experiencing. In talking with him about the spiritual life (which I would contrast with the life of ego, craving, and scarcity), I stumbled upon a mnemonic device that was helpful. Living by spirit guidance involves: Listen. Follow. Trust, or LiFT. If you are into mnemonic devices, you might find it helpful. The mnemonic is not to suggest that spiritual life is formulaic. It is anything but. It is more like a dance, with certain steps that repeat over and over, becoming increasingly familiar, emboldening, accentuated with passion as we learn the steps. (Pardon the mixed metaphors!)
First, listening. I remember when I began to learn mindfulness, and to stop running from the still small voice within me that provided guidance for decisions, exposure of my personal bullshit, and affirmation and love. As I started learning mindfulness, I began to hear the almost constant barrage of commentary that played out in my head, which I hadn’t noticed before. Most often, it was self-justifying commentary, or argumentative commentary. In any case, mindfulness helped me to tune in to another reverberation. I contend that God is the essence of who we are, that we are each a unique piece of the Divine traversing this world. Yet we “have this treasure in clay jars.” Often all we see or listen to is the clay-jar part, though we have potential to be connected with Spirit in our brightest, most vital moments. As we find our center in our God-essence, we have a wellspring of guidance and wisdom at our disposal. It speaks to us from that inner voice. Sometimes we call it “intuition” or “gut feeling” or “Holy Spirit.” Call it what works. But it is speaking—I have no doubt. The Divine is flowing in us not because some out-there God is constantly having a conversation with us, but because that God voice is the essence of who we are. So in the first step of the dance, we learn to listen. We learn to turn inward and tune in.
Next, listening is useless if we continually explain away the guidance out of fear and scarcity-thinking. In response to the listening comes the next step: Follow.
Following is something we contemporaries often don’t like. Obedience, conformity, and limitation are associated with following. But I would say we are always following something, conforming to something. And most often, we are conforming to the wrong thing: to the impulses of our egos and to cultural assumptions we pick up like viruses. It takes practice to listen to the inner voice and follow it out of our scared, ungraceful hiding places.
As we practice, we begin to amass experience, times when we chose to follow the inner voice instead of back-stepping into self-justification. We begin to reflect on our lives and see how times following our inner guidance resulted in shocking, grandiose, beautiful movements. These instances of looking back en-courage us to keep following. Along with practice, courage is key. Often we have to follow against the advice of people still living in their hiding places. Often our inner guidance contrasts with what friends and families tell us we should do. Following our God-essence is not about being weak or sheepish. And to follow in these hard, unexpected moves requires: Trust.
After we listen and follow, we need to trust that the outcome will be for the best for ourselves and others, that we will be provided for, and that the ultimate flow of the dance is redemptive. We have to give in to the dance, trusting that something exquisite will come of it, instead of trying to step in and lead it another way. Often we don’t know how things will play out; we face more uncertainty than certainty. Sometimes painful things happen on the way to restoration. Yet we trust anyway. At first our moves of trust are hesitant and awkward, and we keep stopping midway. But over time, we can become elegant, buoyant, and serene in our dance.
At any point, we can lose courage and trip up, returning to rote movements, to fear and self-security. At times, we will fall down. Sometimes we will walk off the dance floor altogether. But the grace of this dance of spiritual life is that it never ends, and we can restart it again and again, at whatever point we’re ready to take it up. Listen. Follow. Trust: LiFT.
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