Living Limitless
July 28th 2017
There’s a huge difference between what we think we are capable of and what we are actually capable of. Our fullest expression means we have allowed ourselves to explore different avenues inside ourselves without holding back. Curiosity is the key in following unknown paths. Fear and rigid thinking of who we think are or who we should be will hold us back. This week we talk about what it means to live a fully expressed life. It’s not about doing everything available to us, it’s about following the gentle nudges from our soul to explore things we may might not necessarily feel comfortable exploring.
How far can we go? What is our fullest expression? What does it mean? What does it look like? Does it exist? What is our fullest expression?
When you follow the voice that is deeper than your mind, deeper than the voice of your fear and your mind, that voice, the steady, quiet, small voice within, you were led down a path that is unknown to you. It’s not in the confines of what you’ve experienced before and what you know to be true. There’s truths out there that you have not yet discovered yet, and so it is tuned in to your blueprint of your life.
The way I think about it is every acorn has within it a blueprint for this huge oak tree, but the acorn doesn’t go straight to the oak tree. It goes through a process of growth. And in the same way we’re all born as an acorn and we have an expression of an oak tree available to us. And that is a fully expressed life that can only come to you when you surrender to the voice of your inner being, your inner voice, and follow directions from there, follow guidance from there rather than the voice of your mind which looks at all the other oak trees and tries to find which one you want to be like and be that. So it’s very limited the path that our mind will pave for us versus the path that will unfold for us from the space of our soul.
How far you stretch and grow truly depends on you because you have the choice at any given moment to follow the voice of your mind or the voice of your inner being, your soul, your inner voice. You have a choice. And so it’s not something forced on you. It’s not something imposed on you. It is just the choice. When you do choose the path from your inner guidance, you’re led one step at a time through the fruition of it. And there is really no endpoint to it because growth is expansion, it continues. So you don’t get to the point in your life when you’re a certain age and you’re like okay, I’m done, that’s it, we’re the oak tree, it’s finished. No, you continue to grow till your dying breath if you choose to.
That path is… it’s unworn. It’s only for you. It’s for your footprints. It’s made for you. And you follow it by simply becoming aware of what the next step is, because you don’t know where it’s going, you don’t know where it’s leading, but you have an idea of the direction. So when you tune in to your inner voice it’ll give you a step to go to next. When you go to that step and that’s done then you tune in again and you get the next step. And just like that the path unfolds.
The way you grow is by choosing the inner voice over the voice of fear, choosing love over fear, because the inner voice it comes from fullness which is love and it has no fear. That voice has no fear. There’s not a trace of fear in it when you hear it. The voice of the mind is riddled with fear. And you’ll feel the subtleties of what that feels like when you tune in to both. You’ll get the difference.
When you live from the path of love, at several steps along the way you’ll be faced with fear. Your own fear will come up to resist what you’re guided to step into, because what you’re guided to step into is often something unknown to you. It’s different. It’s a bit scary. You’ve never done it before. And so your mind will go crazy. It’ll just be really active trying to warn you against certain things, trying to steer you back to safety, trying to get you back to the known, trying to get you back to where it’s all lit up and you can see everything. Whereas your inner voice is always trying to get you to step further and further on this path that it knows where you’re heading, it has the blueprint for you, but you can’t see it yet.
When you get to the point where you’re being guided to do something that you’ve never done before and it’s different and it’s scary, that is where you can sometimes block your growth or slow it down or procrastinate and you get stuck. And so this fear that’s coming at you, this resistance, is louder and stronger than the curiosity to try, to just give it a go.
What keeps you growing is your curiosity as a state of mind, because it keeps the door open to the path of love and the path of the unknown and your inner voice. So that curiosity is a state of mind. It’s an attitude that keeps you on this path. But what allows you to grow and express is courage to follow that curiosity, to act on that curiosity. You don’t just want to be thinking about it. You want to actually be doing it and trying it out. And so when you act with that curiosity at the centre of your being you will try new things, you will fall, you’ll figure it out, you’ll fumble, but you will grow and it will be amazing.
That path allows you to grow your branches in all different directions. If you just stick to your mind and your mind’s concept of who you are, it might completely block you from experiencing yourself as something different to what has already been formulated as who you are. So I’m a shy person therefore I can’t go out and do public speaking. That construct of being a shy person is just an idea that you have about yourself. You’re not always shy. There are people that you hang out with that you’re… the opposite of shy. So there’s that part of you that’s still there, and your inner voice might ask you to grow that branch in certain ways that confronts your preconceived concept of being shy.
When you get faced with these options along this path, the path of love, you are confronted with your stagnant ideas of who you think you should be or who you think you are, and that identity is based on your experiences, your judgments of those experiences, and what other people have told you about yourself. And so the path of love is always pushing you just a little bit to grow from curiosity and try new things, and it’s just saying well what if you’re not a shy person in this situation? What if it doesn’t even matter if it feels uncomfortable because it’s also going to be very exciting? What if it’s an amazing experience? Don’t you want to try it? It’s a very gentle pushing, pushing, pushing to get you to try and do something new and to experience a new perspective of who you are and what you can do in this world.
How far your vision goes is so far beyond your own imagination. In a way it’s beyond what your mind can come up with for you, and it’s greater than anything you’ve ever seen before. It’s available for you. It’s just for you. This path has got your footprints on it. It’s yours. No one else can walk it for you. And you’ve always got the choice to move in that direction or move in the direction you think is right for you because that’s the mind deciding what’s right for you.
But the inner voice is always prompting you to move in the direction of what you deeply desire from a soul’s perspective, not an egoic mind perspective. And that soul’s directive is coming from a place of fullness, of three cups full. You’re full and you’re experiencing life and you’re exploring it and your branches are growing and it’s amazing and you’re trying new things and you’re expanding.
The voice of the mind comes from a place of what’s not there, what’s lacking and what needs to happen in order to fill up that gap, that hole of what’s missing. And so it’s always a bit of one step forward, two steps back, one step forward, two steps back, so very, very slowly you make progress in that way because it’s coming from a place of fear. The fear outweighs any other emotion. Whereas when you’re on the path of love, you’re getting directions from a part of you that has no fear. It uses curiosity to come up into your mind and that’s how it helps you tame your mind to go in the direction of something unknown. Be curious. Try something new.
That is what helps you get into the next step of what your soul is guiding you to do but courage comes from a place of it’s okay to fail. There’s no such thing as failure. I’m just going to try it. I’m just going to see what happens. Let me see if I can write a book that people want to read. Let me see if I can build a house that can fit my whole family. Let me see if I can write music that inspires people. Let me see. Let me just try. Let me see if I can change this company in the role that I’m in. Let me see if I can find fulfilment right where I am. It’s just a pushing of what is right in front of you and guiding you to a fuller expression of who you truly are. And it comes from a place of who you are right now is absolutely fine. It’s absolutely perfect. You are amazing as you are. There are things that you want to change and things you want to shift and that’s okay. That’s fine. It’s not coming from any sense of lack. It’s coming from a sense of fullness, and from there the tree grows.
When you are in tune with that side of yourself and you’re following that guidance, you will allow your branches to grow in places you didn’t even think you could go, didn’t even think was open to you but somehow you’ve been guided that way. And so when you let go of ideas of who you think you should be and who you are and what you’re capable of, which is very limited, it’s only based on information that you’ve experienced before, and you surrender that away and you can hear that dialogue going but you don’t choose to follow it, you follow instead the voice of your inner being, your soul, it will guide you to the most fulfilling self-expressed journey where every step is fulfilling, every moment is fulfilling, every part of the journey is exciting.
And it has challenges. It will have challenges when your fear comes up to bite you in the butt and you’ve got to face it. You’ve got to sort it out and go well, I’m going to still choose adventure over safety and I’m going to be fine, and all I need is my own back. I’ve got my own back, I’ve got myself covered. We’re good. It’s going happen. I can do it. Then you will create and manifest in your life a vision so much greater than anything your mind can come up with and that is such a magnificent thing to witness. It is so inspiring to see people do that and you see them everywhere. They’re there. Draw inspiration from them and model them. Listen to what they say about things.
I was listening to an interview with Salma Hayek again, one of my favourite people, and she just said the most beautiful thing, and it goes off a video that I did a few weeks ago about complaining. And she says this is how I do things. I don’t give myself permission to whine about anything that I have not tried to change or transform. And so she does still complain about stuff as she says in the interview and she talks about it, which I don’t think is really complaining, she’s just sharing what the problem is, but she’s also working very hard to change it and transform the stuff that she’s not happy seeing, and she does it in so many different projects in so many different ways.
So when you are inspired with something beyond yourself and your ego which is where your mind will keep you and it expands you to see yourself greater than a limited being, your path will unfold so beautifully, and your love, acceptance, and respect… your sense of self will be strong, your acceptance will be wherever you walk you’ll feel like you belong, and your contribution to yourself and to other people will be so beautiful and magnificent that that oak tree that will be there at the end of your life will just be such a beautiful, majestic masterpiece that’s created from an energy that’s flowing through you, that’s beyond your limited mind and thinking patterns that’s always stuck in the known.
I encourage you to step onto the path of the unknown, figure out, learn how to tune in to your inner voice and follow its guidance. It will lead you to the most self-expressed life, the most fulfilling, deeply, deeply fulfilling life that is beyond your imagination. It is there. It’s made just for your footprints, and no one else can walk it for you. It’s for you. It’s for you to walk and it’s really exciting.
That’s it for this week. That’s all we need to talk about today, and I’ll just leave you with the vision of a life that is beyond your imagination. So imagine everything that you could and then leave space for the unknown, of something beyond your imagination.
Sharanya
xx