One life. That is all we have.
Sometimes, despite my very strong belief that a part of us moves on after death, I have to put my beliefs of reincarnation aside as they lull me into a complacent state where a calm voice inside me seems to say:
Its okay, you don't have to get everything right this time around. Do your best, and you will have as many second shots as you can imagine.
Because one of my favorite ways to light a spiritual fire under my a** is to keep myself awake by giving myself a different kind of pep talk:
If life is eternal, deal with your sh*t now. If life is unending, you are going to have to face, let go of, uncover, forgive or grow in that uncomfortable way you know you need to at some point in your evolution. So do it now.
In our current cultural and global climate, we need both of these perspectives. We need to balance our trust in the eternalness of who we really are, and we need to feel that fire to do, to act, to change and to grow or else miss the opportunity for our evolution in this life.
We need to let go of those primitive insecurities driven by a fear of death, the ones which lead us to compulsively achieve without considering a more simple and lasting form of happiness. And we also need to acknowledge that our contribution to the world we live in matters. If we can engage and serve amidst the real world chaos, while possessing a calm knowing of ourselves as infinite, we have struck the golden chord.
As creatives, healers and all around sensory people, we have to strike this balance.
That thing you really want to do but might put off for another 20 years? Do it. The hard uncomfortable place inside yourself that makes you sad when you feel it, but you just can't figure out what it is, or what emotions its attached to? Talk to it. Start creating a dialogue, a relationship to the pain in your life that you are avoiding. Set yourself the intention to learn from it, and then transcend it.
For me, its a multitude of old fears and co-dependencies which rattle around like dead corn husks in my inner being; they're not actively ruling me, but they are taking up space and its time to clear them out.
What is it for you? What is coming up in your awareness right now that you have pushed away. You know its so important to your development, even to true happiness, but its been too obscure or deep to deal with? Share in the comments section on the blog, or send me a message, I want to know.
We don't know for sure if life continues after death. The sages and mystics think so. We know it begins anew each moment. In a sea of lifetimes, believed in or not, everything comes back to one single point which transcends time: Now. Use it wisely.