hermits, sages & shortcuts
This sign amuses me. Something about it seems not-quite-true. I don’t think a real hermit would put up a sign to let people know where they are. (Hermits are known to value their privacy, aren’t they?)
This prompts me to think about how often I search for a Hermit / Guru / Sage / “Someone—Who-Appears-to-have-a-Better-Clue- than-me” about life and how to love it well. As I ponder this, I realise it’s ok that I sometimes want a guru. It makes sense I need wise guidance at times. We all do. At the same time, if we want to grow up and become our full selves, we need to gradually take on more and more of this role ourselves. Nobody else can do this for us. Spiritual growth means accepting the hard work and slow process of unearthing our innate wisdom and learning how to tend and nourish it so it can nourish us too.
Mark Nepo writes that a significant change takes place when our focus becomes “the one who has tasted and not the practice of tasting itself.” When we allow someone to be an intermediary who expounds to others how they should live, it creates “the misguided belief that we can shortcut the process of saging and receive wisdom through one already wise. Much of the instruction of true sages throughout time has been to redirect seekers back to their own innate resources and their own firsthand experiences of the world”. (SEVEN THOUSAND WAYS TO LISTEN, p.52).
At the risk of telling you what to do and how to do it, can I simply say: your wild and precious life has a way it wants to grow. It holds wisdom & resources within it from all your experiences, loves, losses, hopes and shattered dreams. I have a hunch it’d welcome the chance to share some of it’s wisdom with you. This is why I created soulcraft, so we don’t have to do this kind of thing all alone. Having someone alongside as we craft and tend to our lives is often very helpful.
Why is it sometimes easier to see the light in another than to stay put in our ordinary lives and live into the daily wisdom & beauty that is available here? If you want to consult a Hermit, perhaps stay home, make yourself a cuppa and start a conversation with your soul?