The Meandering Path
Following your heart will not be a linear journey
Recently, on the pod, we talked to author Paldrom Collins who wrote a book called Girl in a Box: Seeking Enlightenment as a Tibetan Buddhist Nun. Paldrom grew up in small town Oklahoma and has been on a winding and vast journey which has spanned many places, vocations, and ways of being and understanding the world.
Speaking with her was enlivening because I immediately recognized in her someone who is absolutely devoted to following the call of their heart. Paldrom is open, invitational, wise and sincere and the following passage from her book will sit with me for a long time-
“Yet, as I rest in the quiet of my bubbling water fountain, held in the deepest nourishment where the true beloved resides, in the wordless wedding of the known with what can never be known, thoughts and memories quietly ripple. For a moment it seemed they were calling me to a deeper well, a well not yet experienced—but it is not so. The deep well is simply here, always right here. Those thoughts, those seekings for understanding, are just vestiges of my mind, the record player running itself down. The ongoing story of this life—this perfect teacher, this arising of my state of consciousness, this grand mystery—continues to unfold.”
One of my favorite things about co-hosting a podcast on spirituality is getting to meet and visit with people who have truly come alive to self and who are also wanderers on the meandering path of life.
I’ve spent the last 5 years pursuing what Howard Thurman describes as “the sound of the genuine in yourself”. He describes perfectly what this means here:
“There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”
I have picked back up listening for the sound of genuine in myself after spending many many years avoiding it, seeking the affirmations of others, trying to be good, and at “the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”
This all began for me in an undoing of sorts in the midst of Covid. I found myself at the end of my thirties, completely burnt out from working in a misaligned mega church, pleasing everyone but self, living in my conservative as hell hometown, filled with anxiety and an overwhelming sense of dread and having totally lost sight of the genuine in myself. After a long and hard year of therapy, including EMDR, I realized I had abandoned my own knowing in pursuit of being pleasing and performative and that I was absolutely miserable.
It’s been hard work picking back up on the sound of the genuine. It’s involved relearning self and getting back in touch with my own intuition- two things I had no roadmap of knowing how to do. Being raised in the conservative Christian South didn’t prepare me for the work of drawing nearer to myself, it prepared me to center men, to center a while male God, to center sacrifice and martyrdom while wearing a smile all while never, never showing too much skin or heaven forbid harboring a need.
It’s been a quiet decent back to knowing. Turning off what is distracting and reorienting around what enlivens. It’s patient, slow, necessary work. Following your own meandering path will not make a lot of sense to anyone on the outside, and that’s ok, it only needs to make sense to you and your interior knowing.
You will need companions on your pathway back to the sound of the genuine. Other people who have stepped away from distraction and stepped into the stream of life. You’ll find them by finding those that follow their own curiosity, that are meaning-makers, that have let go of others’ expectations in order to know their own. You’ll find them pouring their hearts into something - it’ll be the gardeners, artists, poets, preachers, thinkers and speakers that delight and resist and invite. Do you know someone who sparkles, who glows with knowing, who your heart keeps being drawn to? That is someone who can hear their genuine sound. Collect those folks like the gems they are and welcome their insight and their knowing.
As my path diverges and dips and loops back and meanders in a lovely nonlinear way I am filled with gratitude. Gratitude for the genuine sound, for the ones who know that their heart is the only true guide we’ll ever have, for folks who have gone before and walk alongside. Gratitude for the knowing that comes with the quiet, with true companionship and with deep love of nature, others and self. Gratitude for yearning, for art, and for beauty.
May this day be filled with listening to the sound of your own genuine, with fellow travelers who are doing the same, and with the call of your heart. Thank you for being a fellow traveler and devotee of the genuine.
*Check out this week’s Radical Sacred episode with the wise and meandering Paldrom Collins!
Listening to the sound of the genuine!!