“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how
things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”
-Rumi
With the
overwhelming amount of advice available to us now in the form of books, e-courses
and blog posts, it can be easy to ignore or overlook our own innate sources of knowledge and wisdom.
Those are other people's stories, the advice issuing forth something they learned in a very specific set
of circumstances, shaped by a very specific history, such that the advice can
only be more relevant to them than to anyone else.
This isn’t to
say that we may not be inspired by the stories and advice of others, or see the
wisdom in them. But, no one’s story, or the wisdom therein, is ever going to be
more relevant and applicable to our lives than that issuing forth from living
our own story.
For better or
worse, the answers to our life’s riddle remain within us.
Unfolding our
own myth, then, is the work that lies before us. It may be tempting to
look outside ourselves for answers as it is easier to dream that someone else has
solved the riddle facing us, and that we can adopt their program and apply it
to our life, but this cut-and-paste orientation ultimately will never produce the results we hope it will. How
could it?
People who have
truly learned anything, who have gleaned wisdom, are people who have wrestled
with their demons and their angels—they have struggled, they have persisted in
the struggle, and out of that come to know something about themselves and the
world that does not translate easily into the lives of others, especially those
who have not yet engaged on that level in a struggle with the demons and angels
populating their own lives.
We are each
required to walk through that fire. No one can do this for us.
So, if we are
looking for a little more peace, love, joy and happiness in our lives, we need
also to understand that these treasures are something to mine for in our own
experiences, our own myth, our own soul.
We need to, in
other words, demonstrate some respect for the life inside us, and we do this best by charting our own course, unfolding our
own myth and getting to know the qualities of our own soul.
Meditate.
Contemplate. Ruminate. Listen. Do
these in whatever form yields results for you in coming to know yourself and
your story better, and do it consistently. Write it down, sing it, dance it,
learn from it … own it.
And be very
discerning when it comes to vetting the advice of any well-intended others.
