This is one of the hardest parts of the human and spiritual path, making decisions.
Because trying to decide what is best for our lives, our souls and our future can be so agonizing.
I know it is for me.
Yesterday I listened to a Sounds True interview with Tami Simon and Carolyn Myss where they discussed what happens after we die.
Carolyn Myss, author, mystical expert and medical intuitive is never one to mince her words in terms of why we are here, and what we need to do. In this particular interview Myss stated, as clearly as possible, that after we die there will be a review of our actions in this life.
That is why what we do today, and everyday on this human journey, matters.
It matters a lot.
I cried when I heard this.
Because I know this, I know what I choose matters.
And in some ways this knowing fuels me. It drives me and motivates me and pushes me to keep going and keep growing.
However, in other ways this same piece of knowledge paralyzes me.
It terrifies me actually, to be perfectly honest.
That is why it is the exact piece of knowledge I need to listen to most, because this critically important and frighteningly powerful teaching, that what we choose matters, is the type of information we need to take into account when we are pondering how to make choices about what to do next.
How do we choose to move left instead of right when steering this ship that is our life?
I think the first step is to really accept there is no right decision or wrong decision to be made.
This is the most difficult step.
Because if our choices matter, if after we die our karma is going to impact incarnations to come, then of course there is a right or wrong decision.
Or is there?
Because is it the actual action that matters, or is it the intention?
Perhaps it is our hearts and minds that are assembling our personal karmic puzzle more then our actions. Perhaps what these two are communicating to the universe is what we really need to pay attention to.
For myself, I am starting to wonder that if in the name of ‘fulfilling my soul path’ I am being mean, ungracious, ungrateful, unkind or just in general letting my own courage get washed away in the storm of fear, then what ‘soul path’ am I really fulfilling?
When we don’t know what to do next, then we basically have a great opportunity to be to be kinder to ourselves and others.
This can be counter-intuitive. Or should I say counter-habitual?
When we are unsure about what to do next in our lives, or even in our day, we often find ourselves thinking that we need to kick our own asses, give ourselves a pep talk and get on with it for God’s sake.
Even if we aren’t sure what getting on with it actually looks like.
And to an extent there is truth in that. Sometimes we do need to give ourselves a little push to get going.
However, if we are pushing ourselves forward from a place of feeling like not enough. If we are using harshness to try to get to the feeling love and security of knowing what to do, then we are forgetting one very important thing.
And that is that our choices matter.
All of our choices.
Not just the ones we can see.
But also the ones we can’t see.
The internal choices of how we speak to ourselves, how we cave in to worry and doubt, how we become so sure that we aren’t strong enough, how we hide our vulnerability under a blanket of quickly making choices so that we can feel like there is a plan in effect are also choices that matter.
They matter a lot.
Because our actual choices about what actions to take or what plans to make will never make everything safe and secure.
A plan of what to do next can’t protect us.
But there is something that can, and that is self-love. When we have our own backs everything gets easier. It is probably the only choice we really ever to make.
The choice to relax in our own sense of love.
From there the other choices of what to do next might even just make themselves.