It seems in our modern, chaotic world, most of us have learned to hear, rather than to listen. But the voice of The North Path cannot be heard; it can only be listened to. And to really listen, one must learn how to turn down the volume of the “Me.”
How does one accomplish this?
The first step is learning to listen in our everyday lives and in our relationships.
Everyone is shouting! Everyone wants something. And underlying this want, at the very core, if we are completely honest with ourselves, is really a need to control the outside world so that it conforms to the M.O.L.E. upon which we are still operating in those circumstances; we are afraid that if we do not use control, we will not get what we want. But fear is a noise band drowning out the whispery yet deafeningly noble Voice within ourselves.
Comparing fear to a river, the celebrated poet and philosophical prophet, Kahlil Gibran, wrote:
“(B)efore entering the sea, a river trembles with fear. She looks back at the path she has traveled, from the peaks of the mountains, the long winding road crossing forests and villages. And in front of her, she sees an ocean so vast, that to enter there seems nothing more than to disappear forever. But there is no other way. The river cannot go back. Nobody can go back. To go back is impossible in existence. The river needs to take the risk of entering the ocean because only then will fear disappear, because that’s where the river will know it’s not about disappearing into the ocean, but of becoming the ocean.”
The path we have traveled with our old M.O.L.E. is long and winding, yes, and it has been with us so long … I know. But we cannot really live until our “I” is free … till we have entered the ocean where the “Me” vanishes into white foam dissolving in the ocean breeze and the lulling sound of the ocean is the only thing we can hear.
That is the voice within.
That is the voice of The North Path.
Let it go.
Yes, it takes courage. We are so afraid that if we let go and stop controlling, our desires will disappear forever. But it is only when we join the sea of “I” that our desires can be truly fulfilled.
It took me half my life to find my soulmate. My long and winding road, my rocky river, was clogged by my old M.O.L.E., so much that I intentionally picked the wrong women early on in life sheerly out of a deep controlling desperation to confirm my M.O.L.E. … that the world is unstable and chaotic and cooperating with others is dangerous.
But I finally realized, that in order to give my best as a soulmate, to fully embrace and enjoy the fruits of my beautiful soulmateship, I had to let go of my old M.O.L.E. for a new and far better one.
The Sea.
The North Path.
And is not life nothing but a complex series of relationships at its heart? We all have a relationship to something or to someone and we are so scared of not getting what we want out of it, that we resort to stubborn control structures to get it, M.O.L.E.’s forged in fear.
Let it go.
There is no other way.
Yours in the infinite joy of the “I,”
Phoenix Richardson.
Featured photo courtesy of Photo Poetry.