I have just completed my second book. It is called Love Equals Power: What To Think As Everything Is Changing. Over the next few weeks I will publish excerpts from my book.
Today’s excerpt deals with the need to separate from our tribe in order to find, and live within, our own truth. Learning to do this is a significant problem for many people, especially for those who have been taught to care what others think of them. But the only hope we have of ever finding peace and fulfillment is through listening and obeying the dictates of our own truth, which is communicated to us through our feelings.
In this excerpt I have tried to create an analogy to illustrate why conforming to the demands of our tribe can not only feel uncomfortable but can lead to physical and emotional dysfunction:
Let’s say that we are all on a journey to the other side of an island, but we all take different routes to get there. Some of us walk on land which entails climbing a mountain; some are in canoes, rowing around the land; while others are in planes that fly over both land and sea.
Clearly, the experiences of those on one route, the equipment and skills they need, their training exercises, as well as the lessons they learn and the valuable information they acquire, will be of little use to those on the other routes. Learning how to climb a mountain assuredly requires a sophisticated level of skill and expertise but those skills are of little use to someone sitting in a canoe, who needs to rely largely on the strength of their arms to surmount the enormous waves and currents of the shifting ocean terrain. They are of even less use to the one who flies the plane.
If we are the one flying the plane it may well be that one of those climbing the mountain is one of our tribe: our mother, father, teacher, life partner, priest, or any other person we admire and trust. Our first reaction might be to feel that we must listen and live within their counsel, which they may attempt to impose on us, because at first glance they seem to know more than us, and we regard them as having a level of innate authority.
It may even be that all the other members of the tribe are clearly on one route whilst we are on another. Often one child in the family just naturally tends toward flying.They are born with a different view of life and have a different approach to their problems. They have an innate and strong sense of who they are and where they are going, it is eminently clear to them that flying is most natural way of being. They can see that it requires very little physical effort and that flying gives such a wonderful perspective that enhances their ability to see where they are going and what to avoid on the way, all the things that are far more problematic for those on the ground.
Flying takes a higher degree of technical skill and not everyone has the capacity or desire to put in the work to attain that level of skill. But if they are surrounded by a family of mountain climbers they must find their own way and not be deterred from their path lest they forget how to fly.
Being on the ground is a far different prospect for one who can fly than for those who cannot. Being limited to the constraints of the lower altitudes is problematic because those with the ability to soar above have different reference points and a different language. Whatever the joys and wonders of the mountain climb, they hold little for the fliers because, at the end of it all, it is just not flying.
We come into this life with an inbuilt compass and a map suited to a particular purpose and orientation, which are not readily transferrable to other modes of travel. If we leave it too long, we soon forget how to use our navigational tools and we then find we are traveling through life without any useful guides. We become ungrounded and rootless, with the propensity to drift into depression and dysfunction.
Until we realize we are on a different route to our tribe it is likely we will experience significant suffering and pain because the truth of our tribe has little validity for us. When we look to them for protection and guidance often they cannot to provide it. Not because they are unwilling but because they are not able. They have no idea of what’s needed because they cannot see what the fliers see.
Looking to them for assistance is like reading from the wrong map. Until we look in the appropriate direction for help, we will make little progress towards our ultimate destination, and may even suffer tragedy or trauma because of our failure to access the right information for our journey.
