Off-the-Shelf or a Custom Life: Which Will You Choose?

In my daily meditations oftentimes I do healing and releasing work for my self, for the environment, and for humanity. I’ve worked very hard to cultivate and hone my connection with higher intelligence and the energy flow of nature. A big part of this connection relies on the daily maintenance and practice of energy hygiene to maintain a clear mind, a pure heart, pure intent, and embodiment of soul and truth. It doesn’t mean everything is done perfectly, but the main idea is to choose true and healthy decisions for your self because you love your self and therefor it comes naturally. Our ideas of what is ‘healthy’ can be muddled and confused, but with practice we learn more and more what that actually uniquely means for us. We must be willing to challenge our ideas of what ‘healthy’ is. Is something ‘healthy’ because we are raised to believe it is? Is something ‘healthy’ because everyone around us does it? Is something ‘healthy’ because some credentialed ‘expert’ told us so? Is something ‘healthy’ because a social media influencer says so or a business sells it to us? Is something ‘healthy’ because it is a trend or because all of the articles on google confirms the same message? We like to get definitive proof and consensus on what ‘healthy’ is because we don’t really know what healthy means until we’ve healed our selves and our connection to nature and our soul. When we do this work for ourselves, we learn what ‘healthy’ means to us because it is what we naturally need and desire, and it doesn’t violate our truths. What we need to be healthy is free and accessible to us all. It’s not about doing things correctly, or having all of the answers, or getting the latest hacks or products. We just need nurturing and love. When we heal and accept our inner emotional and spiritual world, our physical and mental health heals, and all the guidance we seek are revealed within over time.

I have been on this journey for some time now and there are always more levels to achieve. The ways we are able to heal, learn and grow are infinite. I’ve had the spontaneous spiritual awakening, I’ve done the incredibly hard work to heal (and continue the work), I’ve honed and crafted my connection to higher intelligence (and continue to do so), I’ve optimized my health and lifestyle, and I’ve achieved divine states of bliss, peace, love and enlightenment that everyone idealizes. But nothing ever stays exactly the same or lasts forever as is. Nor should we want it to be because eternal happiness is boring without contrast, and we cannot continue to learn or grow. There are so many books and spiritual wellness voices out there that sell people the illusion of attaining eternal happiness, love, wealth and enlightenment. Like if I heal or achieve these states, I’ve made it. My life is complete and I can get all that I want, and I’ll live happily ever after and never experience any more problems. But that’s not the point of life, nor is it the way nature works. Nothing lives forever and no flower is always in full bloom. The point of life is to live it and feel it and experience the incredible diversity of it, in all of its beauty and range of emotions. I find that some of the most poignant and remarkable moments in my life have not been times of pure happiness or joy, but in the beautiful moments of sadness, pain, fear, love and joy all mixed in together. To me, those are truly the magical moments of life, when I feel everything and it is complex and layered and rich, and I’ve learned something deeply profound. Where meaning and appreciation is learned and gained. We should not aspire to picture-perfect ideals, instead, we should aspire to live rich and meaningful lives in which we give ourselves diverse experiences to feel, connect, learn, and grow. This means, yes, sometimes taking risks, making intuitive yet illogical choices, and going on detours.

Something I’ve been experimenting with more and more is allowing myself to be guided by pure emotion and desire, along with my intuition. It’s taken me some time and healing to learn to trust my desire again, without the over-protection of my mind. After all that has happened, I tell myself, I’m strong, I’m resilient, I can take it. Even if it leads to disappointment that’s okay, at least I’ve learned something from it and whether I realize it or not, it’s taking me one step closer to where I’m supposed to go. Logically, I know that something may not seem like the best idea or may not be ‘safe’ or ‘right’ or ‘practical’ or self-serving, but if I feel there is an emotion or desire I will permit myself to follow it and see where it takes me. It’s like walking a path you know (logically) you shouldn’t but for some reason you feel that you must. All signs may point to possible danger or disappointment or heartbreak or getting lost…but you can’t shake the feeling that it’s imperative that you take this detour. This has pretty much been the past few years of my life: one detour after another. But in taking these detours they have expanded my reality and sense of self. They don’t take me to where I think I want to go, but they do take me to new and surprising places I never thought possible. Oftentimes these detours produce more confusion, turmoil, and challenge. Like untangling more knots or bushwhacking my way through uncharted territory. Just when I think I’ve explored all there is to explore, turned over every stone, and conquered every challenge…a new doorway opens to another. And I’m left questioning everything I thought I knew, then gaining enormous clarity, then doing it again and again to expand my sphere larger and larger like an expanding Universe.

Living life takes a lot of effort and energy. Sometimes you need to build, and sometimes you need to break it down. Sometimes you need to be willing to live and sometimes you need to be willing to die. But in the end, what we create out of all the re-knitting, repurposing and rebuilding is a life. A culmination of our cycles, our experiences, and our learnings. Life is what you make of it. You create a life through your everyday decisions and choices. Everyday, you get to reaffirm the same choice or you get to make different choices. And to have real choice, you need your own energy. To have your own energy, you need to stop giving it away, and you need to clean and cultivate the energy inside of you. Oftentimes by default, people choose comfort and illusion because they don’t have energy, because our society has engineered it so — people are too tired, too exhausted, too depleted, too discouraged. So instead of making new and different choices that can help expand our reality, we make the same ones to keep it the same—it’s easier and requires less energy. We’re all faced with choices. We can choose predictably or we can choose the unknown. We can choose illusion or we can choose truth. We can choose the conventional path or we can forge our own. We can choose an off-the-shelf life or we can choose to create our own. Whatever you choose, make sure it’s what you alone want because after all, it is your life. And at the end, only you will judge if you are content with the choices you made and the life you lived. Forging your own path won’t be easy, but it will be rewarding because it’s yours.