There are times in life when we have absolutely nothing left. When everything we thought we knew for sure turns out to be wrong. The masks are finally removed and what has been hiding inside comes to the surface. These are life shaking and life shaping transformations that defy any words we might ascribe to them. The intensity of the moment or emotion is felt so deeply it can’t be spoken or codified, it refuses to be ordered and sorted. There is only surrender to what ‘s unknown.

Times such as these call for more than we think we can give. They require us to sacrifice who we thought we were for the truth of what’s inside. I will give you a hint here, the truth is often terrifying and the exact opposite of what we’ve believed up until this point. Who we are is more complicated, loaded with paradox and incredibly uncomfortable at times. Here the shocking sits alongside the soothing. There is no logic, there is no solution, there is no escaping unscathed. We are left with the seed that sits inside waiting to bloom and we either shine a light on it or we let it wither. No words wait here to console us.

Often it feels easier to let this new realization of who we are die. It takes too much care and consideration and death-defying energy to fully bring it forth. It takes an act that seems beyond what we can muster and this shakes and sets fire to all that we have known and taken for granted. When that facade has been razed to the ground we are ready for what really is. 

The truth comes to find us in a place beyond words, a place beyond planning or thinking and it saves us from our shallow conceptions of what our life ought to be. It comes to deliver a pain that sets us free. This pain strips away all our pretense and asks one thing of us – to be who we really are. Not what’s expected or desired of us, not what other’s want. If we can answer back from a place that is our absolute truth the seed sprouts and we are carried, as if by magic, to what heals our soul. 

This is the wordless journey of the soul. We only have to be brave enough to take it. To step foot into a world that completely honors who we are and our deepest wishes for what we want to become. This world we have to create for our self. But how? This is why we have the mystics and poets, to approximate the wordless journey that starts within our heart and opens us to something greater than all imagining.

kb

Be truthful now,

see yourself as you plainly are. 

You’ve got a hidden wound, 

and this is no time for posing.

When inward tenderness,

finds that secret hurt,

the pain itself will crack the rock

and, ah! let the soul emerge.

– Rumi