Faithful To The Beauty You Are

What would it look like if we simply decided to stop whatever we are doing and wait until the impulse to move came from a deep awareness of sacred presence within and around us and then followed wherever it led? 

When I think of this happening in the world I imagine a work-weary woman in a busy office suddenly pausing at her desk, doing nothing for a moment, and then getting up and quietly walking out the door, leaving her computer running and her co-workers baffled. 

I imagine a man sitting in his living room dozing in front the TV as he does every night after dinner, suddenly turning his head as if to catch the echo of some sound coming to him from a great distance and after listening for a minute, getting up and without bothering to turn off the TV, walking outside and continuing in the direction of the setting sun.          

          

Oh I know what you’re thinking: How will the woman pay her bills without her job? What about that man’s responsibilities to his family? But you’re leaping to conclusions about what will happen next. 

Maybe the woman finds another way to provide for herself and her family that does not rob her soul of the joy she longs for everyday. Maybe she finds she does not need as much, or maybe she returns tomorrow and finds a different way to be in that office.

Maybe the man, waking up from his habitual patterns and walking toward that which calls him, really sees his family for the first time and can offer them something more than the tired absence of daily routines divorced from the meaning at the center of his life.

           

I am not suggesting that listening to the call will necessarily require that you leave your job, or turn off your TV, although I admit I think I could launch a pretty good argument for the latter. One person may be able to be faithful to the beauty of their awareness of their essential nature, to the ecstasy of touching the Beloved daily and still work in an office, while another may need to leave. 

The hard part is that we cannot predict what the call will require, how that sacred stillness at the center of all that is might inspire us to move if we have the courage to simply sit with it and follow the impulse to move when it comes.

Excerpt from The Call by Oriah Mountain Dreamer (c) 2003 Published by HarperONE, San Francisco. All rights reserved.