I once heard an ancient Sufi story about a man who was out in
his yard looking for his house keys. His neighbor saw him and asked him what he
was doing. He told the neighbor he was looking for keys he had lost. His
neighbor offered to help him look. After a long while of looking to no avail,
the neighbor asked the man “where
exactly did you loose the keys?” The man
said “in the house” the neighbor replied “why then are we looking out in the
yard for them if you lost them in the house?” The man said “because the light
is better out here”.
I love this story. I feel it illustrates how many of us
approach our emotional/spiritual healing process. We often look outside
ourselves for the answers to heal our pain or discomfort. We seek parental
figures, teachers, gurus therapists, doctors and advisors to tell us what to do.
If we are lucky, someone will guide us and ask questions that lead us more inward.
But more often then not, most will give us answers….tell us what to do. They
will give us how to’s and tasks to help fill our time “looking for the keys in
our yard” so we trick ourselves in believing we are doing the work but in
reality nothing is changing. The reason we have painful patterns that we cant
seem to change is because we never really identify the core issue and all the
beliefs we attach to it along the way.
We would have to go inward to identify the causes and the unresolved
issues tied to them. We cannot do what some one else tells us to do because they
are not us. We cannot live another’s vision of us. We cannot manifest some one
else’s expectations of us or our lives.
I had the kind of teachers that told me what to do “for my
own good” and sometimes it was for my own good, especially when I was a small child
I needed external direction. Many people tried to tell me how to fix my
problems based on their life experiences. But that never really solved
anything. The teachers that stand out as
the most impactful, who helped me go to new levels in my development, were the
ones who witnessed my challenges and helped me navigate thru my journey within to identify my hopes and
fears and more importantly my true strengths and purpose. They did not weaken
me by giving me the answers or telling me what to do, they challenged me to
figure things out thru my experience and emotional honesty. They offered me
clues and tools but with the understanding that the experience was mine and
that every decision was my responsibility. Therefore every success was mine but
so was every failure. They loved me and encouraged me along the way even if I
failed. Sometimes I was even celebrated for my failures because the real
success was just in trying regardless of the outcome. By doing this, with out
saying the words, they told me that they believed in me.
I realized that I wasn’t stupid or weak and I could go on
this exploration even though I was scared. Here is where I learned that there
is no courage if there is no fear present so fear in itself did not mean
weakness. Not moving forward despite the fear was the weakness.
This was how I began to know who I was. Not by some one
telling me who I was and what to do, but, by my experiencing myself, my
internal world, the good the bad the ugly and the beautiful…. where the truth
waited for me.
We do not require the light to see. We do require courage,
patience and compassion.
And there’s moreJ
