Many years ago I told my best friend that I felt that I needed to somehow find my way up to the mountains for a few months to just sit with myself and melt into the silence.
That silence, the thing that used to scare me the most, became my greatest teacher.
From all of the quiet, I finally heard the deeper layers of myself whisper that had been hiding behind hardened walls speak their truth again.
They echoed what the others had throughout time – adventure, passion, expansion.
But these, they spoke of something far deeper.
Love.
Not just any type of love. The type of love that only the one can give. The type of love that runs through your heart when you finally stop seeking and you see that everything you’ve needed is already here.
Here…in on way or another.
Maybe it has always been here? Maybe you were so blinded by looking at everything else that you couldn’t see what had been there all along.
For a very long time, I’ve felt that there’s been a piece of glass in front of me. While that glass was getting cleaner and cleaner, there was still this boundary that existed.
I see that this boundary was pain.
You can see through that pain when you start diving deeper and deeper into yourself, but there’s still something solid there.
Something keeping you protected from these things that you believe you fear.
For me, that was getting hurt again in ways that I’ve been hurt in the past. That was me developing myself like crazy and yet refusing to let go of the wall that was protecting me from others.
I see that now.
I see that my greatest moment of growth has been in starting the process of letting go of the story, the sword, the shield and the armor.
It’s in softening.
It’s in loosening my grip on the past.
But even more, and here’s where the whispers spoke much wisdom, it’s in going back one more time, reading through it all, and finding those pieces of wisdom I have lost touch with all those years ago.
At times, here in the mountains, there has been a great deal of confusion.
I slowly but surely let go of stories.
I let go of people.
I let go of things that were no longer for me.
But I suffered in the letting go of those things. There were old pieces of me that rebelled against these intentions and at times I succumbed to them.
I learned.
I committed again and again.
I came back to what I knew I had to do.
Maybe somewhere down the line it will get easier as I take on these big tasks. Maybe I will be able to not struggle as much as I let go more and more and clear the way for what is meant for me.
I guess I will see?
What I do know is that there is no greater journey to be taken than looking deep within your heart and answering to your purest callings.
The landscape of your soul serves as a great playground and at times a field of challenges. That’s how it’s designed to be.
If you have the courage to face The Shadow and illuminate it with The Light then everything begins to change.
Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project