The Seasoned Soul Searcher: A Scavenger Hunt Of Life
SEEKING ANSWERS ABOUT WHO YOU ARE
Have you spent time in your life seeking the deeper meaning of this world? Do you yearn for a connection to something greater than the surface level interactions? Do you find spiritual teachings you resonate with, groups you feel drawn to, and then you don’t?
As you walk through life searching for the answers to your deeply held questions, you find things that work for a while, they make sense, and then suddenly your off and running to the next thing. Do you find yourself doing this? Do you ever feel like you are on a scavenger hunt looking for a long-lost sacred treasure? But for some reason you never find it. It feels like something is missing and you don’t know where to look.
If you are truly wanting to know who you really are, chances are you’ve done at least one of the following:
Read several spiritual or self-help books throughout the years.
Listened to various spiritual or religious leaders and their teachings for guidance.
Participated in a workshop, group retreat, or enrolled in a class to learn more.
Binge watched videos, lectures, documentaries, and interviews on your favorite soul-searching website.
Participated in numerous forms of mental, emotional, and/or physical healing techniques or therapies.
Your mind is open to endless possibilities, and you are genuinely wanting more meaning in your life. You’ve tried finding peace and happiness on the surface but have probably come to the conclusion that it’s only temporary at best.
Investigating different insights, teachings, and spiritual paths is a true passion and you feel called to many different ideas. You might find yourself diving head on into a particular topic, learning as much as you can, implementing the teachings for a period of time, only to find you are still not satisfied. Something is still missing, but you can’t figure out what it is, let alone how to discover it. There’s a big fat void inside that never seems to feel fulfilled.
EVENTUALLY THE HUNT COMES TO A HALT
If you feel like any of the above and you just aren’t discovering the depths of who you are, by any number of modalities, you might halt the treasure hunt and simply stop looking outside of yourself. All the seeking may be leading you to deeper concepts, traditions, practices, and intriguing information, however, you still don’t feel the inner peace you desire.
They have been wonderful steppingstones, learning tools, and guides that are finally turning the search 180 degrees the other direction. Instead of searching high and low outside of your own walls, you now see the importance of pivoting from a strategy that isn’t working. It’s like the treasure you are seeking is hiding so brilliantly you don’t yet see it. You are searching high and low out in the world with zero success.
Listening to others who explain the peace they feel and how they discovered it is certainly helpful, not to mention interesting. It gives those of us who want the deeper connection in life hope, that it’s possible to unlock the treasure box within. You may find yourself holding on to their every word, even wishing you were them. You might be questioning why you can’t seem to discover what they have. You might even get so enthralled in this leader’s teachings you lose sight of your own inner guidance on the matter.
The ego may easily prop this person up on a spiritual pedestal, that they have something you don’t have. You might find yourself thinking Swami X, Y, and Z says he knows the nature of reality, so you bet everything you have on anything he says. Notice these inner ego voices if they appear. This aspect of the mind will only try and make you feel inferior, when you are not. Each one of us will have our own unique path to discover what is already sitting right within us. Unfortunately, we can spend far too long looking for lost treasure outside of ourselves. If reincarnation is real, then we’ve been submerged in the hunt for eons.
At some point, the call within will pull you inward. It will become so loud, so obvious, that you simply cannot ignore it any longer. Even if you have no idea what to do, how to do it, how to listen to your inner guidance, you know it’s what is being asked of you.
There may be a subtle hint of fear, which is why you are busy staying distracted with outside information. The mind is slightly terrified of what it may learn about itself, so it would rather not be silenced. If you see this is what’s happening, you will not only understand the objective of the ego mind, but it will make your journey easier. You will see what is happening even if you can’t change it right away.
UNCOVER THE INNER GATEWAY
When the time is right, you will feel it’s time to stop the outside search and start seriously looking within. You might be asking, “How do I do that? What does that even mean to look within myself?”
Because we are so accustomed to seeking externally for most of our solutions in life, turning the table inward can seem completely foreign, almost uncomfortable. You do not have to follow any specific teaching, any specific methodology, any certain meditation, this is solely your journey.
The easiest way to begin is to simply find time during each day, or at least a few times a week, to just sit and be. Find a quiet space in your home, or a place you like outdoors, it really doesn’t matter, make it work for you. It doesn’t matter what anyone else tells you or what anyone else thinks, listen to what feels right for YOU.
Start by sitting, lying down, whatever is comfortable. Just be there. Look around your space and connect to everything around you. Instead of looking at thinking, or worrying about your thoughts, see if you can shift out of mind and into feeling the environment you are in.
What do you feel? Do the items you see have meaning or are they simply sharing space with you? Notice how often your mind will say:
This exercise is pointless.
You should be doing something productive.
I don’t feel anything.
I can’t sit still. I need to move.
You forgot an important to do list item that you need to attend to immediately.
These may be just a handful of things that might come in to distract you. Getting into being present, staying silent for just a short time, will slowly allow the space within to expand and present itself to you. The more time you put into it, the easier it will be to connect.
You could look at this practice as a form of detachment. Detachment can be seen in different ways. Many interpret detachment and think they need to physically detach from the material world. That’s pretty difficult to do unless you’re comfortable roughing it out in the wilderness for the rest of your time here.
Can detachment be seen in a different light? Can detachment simply infer that you no longer give the material world the same meaning? In fact, it may seem meaningless which means you don’t take it so seriously. It doesn’t mean you need to leave the system, start a new movement with others, or stop participating in life, all it suggests is that you see the material realm clearly. You can still go about your life as normally as you always have, yet you are doing it with understanding.
Just like sitting in silence in the space you’ve selected, you are practicing detachment, detachment from your thinking mind, detachment from the meaning of the things around you, and you are feeling yourself expand and connect with the field of awareness that is everywhere. This too, is a form of detachment. You can learn to take this practice with you as you walk through your daily life.
INNER GUIDANCE LEADS THE WAY
Once this becomes a part of your life, you will take it with you wherever you are guided. You will find it easier to step out of the thinker and feel what is being communicated to you. You will detach from needing to know all the answers and let life unfold for you.
When you live in this way, you are flowing with life instead of swimming against it. You accept that you are always exactly where you need to be. Allowing the sacred space within you to grow and become a leader in your life is what you were always seeking all those years on the scavenger hunt.
X marks the spot on the treasure map, and it is within you. You have surrendered and found your ticket to inner peace, and the pathway home.