“We cannot live in a world that is not our own, in a world that is interpreted by others. An interpreted world is not home. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light.” – Hildegard von Bingen

There is only one way to create a meaningful life, it’s by doing the work. If you are waiting for a miracle to happen, to wake up one day and suddenly everything is perfection, you’re barking up the wrong tree. The only way anything gets done – anywhere in the world – is by hard work.

We are all use to the hard work we do to make a living, getting up early, staying late. There is the work of raising children, which is non-stop, 24/7. This is what we are familiar with, doing the work of the soul, not so much. There are less hard and fast rules. It gets a little vague, and that’s why it becomes so easy to substitute our unique vision for our life with someone else’s or with material things.

Contentment and fulfillment takes a strange kind of work that is unfamiliar. A lot of the time it’s very lonely work. But this work is a vehicle for transformation. I don’t think this is something we can touch directly, we circumambulate it. In order to escape the surface and dwell deeper, we have to dig in the dark.

That beautiful quote from Hildegard von Bingen shows a woman following her own path, not guided by the times or others opinions. She lived from 1098-1179 and had visions from early on in her life. She was an offering to the Church and spent the rest of her life there. She later founded her own monastery and throughout that whole time, recorded her visions, created works of music that her nuns performed, and used herbs and baths to heal the sick. She stood up for herself and what she believed to be true and right for her and the nuns she tended. I feel like her words and life are revolutionary and are so far in advance of the idea of individuation. She was a pioneer of the interior.

Hildegard expressed fully who she was at a time and in a culture that didn’t support her ideas. She had a clear vision of who she was and how she fit into the cosmos. This is what is asked from all of us. The only question is will we listen. She had a gift, these visions, that just came spontaneously, but she followed them. They lead her on her own unique path. But we all have our own unique vision of ourselves and what fits us perfectly. That is what we have to follow to become our authentic selves. We have to do the work.

There are lots of different ways to work out what our own path entails, through journaling, meditation, dream work, analysis. These are some of the tools, the question becomes what tools resonate with you. We pick and choose those tools that allow us to listen more intently to the voice within that knows what it wants. We need to listen to what that voice has to say, honor it, and then follow where it leads us in our life.

Wholeness is created by building up our interior life with these tools. We put into action what is gleaned from this work and it grows our lives in depth and meaning. How we do this is personal and individual. But building up this interior landscape gives us those aspects we’ve lost in the overdose of massive materialism. There is a the road to the interior, to the secret life of the soul lost in all the action of our day to day life. Turning inwards, following the vision we have of our lives, brings us face to face with what is lasting and authentic. This work brings us closer to all those intangibles that create a feeling of fulfillment and meaning. 

Here’s to having the strength to follow what is true for us.

kb