What if…
we all just stopped, looked up, and let Life ring through, as clear as a birdsong or a bell?
“Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”—Leonard Cohen
What if…
Instead of becoming infatuated again with all the bluster and footwork of passion and will, we remembered that..
Life is designed to support full expression and growth.
Our mammal bodies are 2.5 million years in the making and we can trust their innate wisdom.
As spiritual beings we are eternal and can never get it wrong because we are never really done.
What a blessed relief, to be out of the how and what business, all those beginnings and middles. All that self-loathing disguised as self-help. All that crack patching.
What a blessed relief to love yourself because you are that way.
“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees through the desert for a hundred miles repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”—Mary Oliver
If expression has any point, it is that. Just the soft animal of your body giving its grief cry or joy cry, or maybe its particular flavor of silence.
Denying the soft animal of your body makes it sad and can also make it sick.As Carolyn Myss says, “if you don’t have passion you do have symptoms.”
The main reason I love helping people fully express themselves is because I know how much it hurts not to.What a painful lie it is to feel invisible, voiceless, separate.
As a spiritual life coach and photographer, I give space to what is already there and let it shine forth. It is a simple and healing thing. Really the most natural thing. There is nothing to fix. Makeovers to the soul are a form of violence.
Looking back I can see how all the emphasis I put on my “Hero’s Journey”, my evolution and growth, my specialness and sensitivities, only made the illusion of separation stronger.
22 years of following the Western rabbit trail of freedom later, I have realized I didn’t need to be a ragged individual, didn’t need to create unique gyrations of style to be someone, didn’t need to improve, or even lead, my life.
In fact there is no such thing as “My life”. Just life. Just One with Life.
I had followed my voice back home.
In hindsight I see that even my inner resistances and apparent “hitch in my gitalong” was perfectly orchestrated. All the things that didn’t happen were grace too.
What hasn’t happened lately that you are grateful for?
What is the simplest or most outrageous thing you can be, do, or say now in service of what you love most?
Share your comments and insights below.
Doug Ellis is a professional light-bringer, photographer, and spiritual/somatic life coach. His life is dedicated to heart-centered expression and the healing power of being deeply seen.
