Living consciously in a world that sleeps

There’s a beautiful book by Parker Palmer, called Let Your Life Speak. It’s short, simple and honest, and it had a real impact on me.

(Because: less is more).

In it, there’s a line that talks about ‘moments when it is clear – if I have eyes to see – that the life I am living is not the same as the life that wants to live in me. In those moments, I sometimes catch a glimpse of my true life, a life hidden like the river beneath the ice.’

When I read this, I shivered - and not because of the ice reference.

I recognised the truth of it for myself, even now, when in recent years I have given up my former life, and on the face of it, everything looks different. I have a completely different work focus, a different relationship status, a different way of operating and being in the world, and even a different sexuality! All of these things feel true for me. They resonate deeply; I don’t question them.

So … why do I still I have moments that feel like those Parker Palmer describes? It is not so much that I feel that I am not living my true life, but that there is an indefinable more, a just-out-of-reach deeper?

Is it because I am still only at the beginning of this truer path, and there is more to discover? Or is it that although I have been brave, I could have been braver still? Are there other, more challenging paths I could have taken, but chose not to? I look back and I can honestly answer ‘not to the best of my knowledge.’ But these questions dance around in my mind. Sometimes. At other times, they don’t present themselves at all.

Or, I find myself wondering, against the backdrop of the climate crisis, war and inequality, (plus all the everyday lack of compassion of our leaders) is this yearning speaking to me of a soul-level craving not simply to live my values, not only to be of service, but to do so in a compassionate society where people are in right relationship to our true mother, the Earth?

This is an essential part of my vision. Is it really another life I am glimpsing, or a coming to the surface of a soul memory of a way of life that is no longer society’s norm, that would slake the soul’s thirst for wildness, connection, dancing, community?

Perhaps a part of us will always feel some level of sadness when our untamed soul must live constrained by the rules, disconnection and artificialities of our modern way of life. This deeper change is something that no one of us can accomplish alone, but we have to hope things are changing, below the surface.

I still feel hope for humanity, hope for our souls and for a deeper connection of all of us with the soul of the world.