What gives me direction in life now, is me quite simply. I choose the way my compass is pointing now, and increasingly I draw upon information from my mind, body and spirit to do so. And I am finding a real sense of peace, certainty, and confidence in it.
As I have said before, I was made redundant from my job almost 2 years ago. This time 2 years ago, we were going through the consultation process, and I knew that there was no going back from it. The world had changed, and other organisations had been invented to do elements of what we did. Not all in one place, but they existed and it wasn’t possible any longer to keep fighting against the tide. I was okay with it, as long as my staff secured alternative employment (they all did, at a time that suited them) because I knew then that I wanted to write. My compass was pointing in a certain direction, and I was following it probably for the first time in my life. That direction had started nearly 2 years before, when I followed the most intense guided meditation I have ever known. What came out of it was the fast tracking of a spiritual journey that had started years before. At first, it had been a slow and gradual path but as I say, sped up significantly with the meditation, and then seemed to go on turbo charge with my redundancy.
I will be honest and say it has not been an easy journey at any step, that my ego mind has kicked in continuously. Sometimes it has been difficult to tell the difference between my soul and my egoic mind, but as with everything that is part of the learning curve. The biggest issue I think is the ability to trust a spiritual context when we are raised to only believe what we see rather than see what we believe. In a world where we live only through our five senses, starting to rely on our sixth sense as the predominant sense is a massive shift. And it certainly doesn’t happen overnight. The dark night of the soul is real, it does take you to the edge, it is painful, but when you start to emerge out the other side, it is with a strength and a knowing that is astounding. And a faith that is intrinsic rather than something easily knocked.
What I am now in the process of doing is bringing my soul, my subconscious mind, and my body together so that they are in synch. I know my egoic mind will follow, but that if I don’t get into my subconscious mind and start to remove the patterns of behaviour it runs based on years of experience, I won’t get to where I want to be as a person. And I haven’t listened to my body nearly enough. I don’t listen to it when I am putting food into it that doesn’t nourish it, that actually inflames it and makes it uncomfortable, which it tells me with aches and pains that I disregard because in the moment, I am enjoying the food. Or punishing myself with it, something I have come to realise that I do. I allow myself to be distracted when I eat rather than focusing on what I am doing and how it is feeling, which means I eat more than I should and I eat food that is not always the best for me. I am currently recovering from Covid, and as always with this virus and me, I have lost my sense of taste and smell. I only recovered 70% of those olfactory senses from the first time I had Covid in 2021, and each time I’ve caught the virus since I have lost that 70% almost immediately. And yet, I continue to eat too much even though I cannot taste a thing. Which tells me I don’t necessarily eat because I am enjoying it (trust me, there’s no real enjoyment when you cannot taste anything), but because it is a habit, it is as a result of ‘food noise’ (f0r me, a fear of hunger based in a lack mindset), and because I allow myself to be distracted so I can’t tell when I am genuinely full or not. I eat mindlessly rather than mindfully.
I have also allowed myself to be distracted so that the silence that our soul operates in cannot be heard. Social media is my drug of choice in that regard, with the endless scrolling through Facebook or Instagram, even LinkedIn. Or I read news sites. Nothing that is really nourishing me, only distracting me and switching off the noise I do need to hear. The messages from my Higher Self. I have sat in that silence now for a while, and gotten myself very comfortable with it. The answers to a great many questions have come from that silence, answers that have helped me enormously. The not going through social media has meant that I am significantly more productive in my day, I have a real focus on my soul and how I can address the issues in my subconscious, I can hear the messages from my soul concerning my body, and how I can course correct. Messages such as asking me why I would want to eat whatever it is I am thinking of. Am I genuinely hungry, or is it that I am scared of being hungry and feel that I ‘should’ eat something. I am tremendously guilty of that. I ‘should’ eat lunch because it is lunchtime, not because I am hungry there and then, but because I have this deeply held fear that when I do want to eat I won’t be able to. I have no idea where that comes from, because to my knowledge that has never happened. But it is a very deep-seated fear that I am working to overcome.
One of the very strong messages I hear from my soul regularly is that the answer to everything is internal, and yet we spend a huge amount of our time looking externally for answers. The answers are there in the silence, the noise comes when we look for them externally. In the external, we become busy ‘doing’ rather than ‘being’. Only in the internal can we be busy ‘being’ which leads to far more productive ‘doing’. I have spent the whole weekend being really productive with my writing, around the house, and being present for my family. I am reading the most enlightening book I didn’t even know I had on my bookshelves, and I am getting 8 hours of sleep even with achieving lots of goals for the weekend. And I did not look at social media once. At first, it was difficult not to, but now it is Monday afternoon and I have only just looked at the notifications. What did I find in them? Nothing that was remotely important or even truly relevant to me. So, I am limiting myself to one hour per day maximum on social media. If that.
This is what I mean by following my direction. The direction of my mind, body, and soul to become the person I want to be. To do the things I want to do with my life, and to do them in a way that I am present. Following yourself as your direction may sound selfish, but it’s actually the least selfish thing. Because I am, as I say, far more present for my family, far more peaceful in myself which benefits them, and far more likely to encourage healthier habits in them by demonstrating them in myself. In following my own direction in this way, I do firmly believe I am also benefiting the collective because my actions, the vibration I am emitting from them, benefits the collective enormously.
I am, in essence, following a direction where I live life consciously. Conscious of the impact of my actions on myself and on others. I am finding it is a gentler way of life, more peaceful, and as I say much more productive.
Louisa Simpson 