Trusting the Path
In midst of the warm and
the cold the path will always
find us, illuminating
the wisdom of the wilderness
How does it feel, when we effort and try hard to make things happen to get ourselves on the right path, constantly assessing where the next turn is and whether it’s the right one? And how does it feel when instead we set our intent of what we want and trust that the path will find us? It’s a very different state of being in the world.
This is how I now walk across Karura Forest, a beautiful forest in Nairobi which has survived thanks to Wangari Maathai, a true hero of the modern world. I grew up using maps to orient myself. My father was great at teaching us using maps to walk over mountains and in towns in foreign countries. He gave us a map and let us figure out where to go. I considered myself great at using maps but poor in orientation without them. When driving for the first time in Berlin – I had borrowed a car from a fellow student to move my belongings from a private room to a student house at the other end of the city – I sat in the car with an unwieldy map on my lap trying to orient myself in the midst of Berlin traffic. And I wasn’t a skilled driver then! I never forget that journey. It was stressful to say the least, as I had to pay attention both to the physical world around me and the attempted model of this world on the map and bring these two together! GPS didn’t exist back then. Not to mention that the car was a Renault, worlds apart from the VW of my parents, the only car I had driven so far.
Isn’t that how we often try to navigate across life? In unknown territory, with a host of unknown variables, trying hard to make the right things happen with the cognitive maps we build up over our life time. But what if the maps do not reflect the reality and are not fit for purpose for what is in front of us in the present moment? Maps are always a simplified representation of the world. And they are based on past experiences from which we generated subjective beliefs and assumptions. They may not serve us now. A cognitive map from our past will always represent our past and does not open us to the possibilities of the future.
Back to my walking in Karura Forest where I go most weekends because I love forests and I love walking in them. A few years back when I occasionally went to walk there I used a map and always got lost, despite my presumed skills in map reading. When I started going there regularly last year, I didn’t even remember about maps. I went deep into the forest using lots of small paths and lanes because this is where the forest starts to feel like a forest. I decided to trust myself and my intuition and forget all about my belief that I was poor at orienting myself. And you know what? I have never got lost and have always found my way out at the right time. There may be some truth in that I am poor at orienting myself because yes, I have gone into the wrong direction many times. But I never efforted at it or got worried. I trusted myself and the forest and the path has always found me.
In the last edition I spoke about learning to cherish the state of incompletion – about feeling whole and satisfied at every point of our journey, with things continuously incomplete and in the state of becoming. So what about the direction of the journey? Are we going in the right direction or even in any direction at all? Here is the perspective that has served me: As long as I am growing as a person, I am going in the right direction. Things that I wanted to do may not have turned out exactly the way I wanted them, projects may have failed, there may have been all sorts of delays, and unexpected challenges may have cropped up.
If we can see our own growth, learning and personal unfolding across everything that is happening, we can create a positive state about whatever is going on and always have a sense of progress and direction on the journey. And if we can trust that things will unfold in the service of our personal learning and growth, that one turn will lead to another turn that will bring something new and useful, we can start trusting ourselves. We can start trusting life. From this state of being, relaxed, and trusting, open to any situation in the present moment, the path find will always find us.
Practice
With every important situation or challenge ask yourself: How is this situation enabling me to grow as a person? What am I learning from it about myself and about life? What am I getting better at? Create a sense of appreciation about the situation, whatever it is.
If you cannot see anything useful in it, keep an open mind about it. At a later point some wisdom in it might emerge. Over time you will develop trust that every situation is a learning experience on your journey. This will shift your mind into a more relaxed state about challenges, dilemmas, decisions and direction
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