Stepping Stones

We try to control our lives. With every choice we make, we agonize over what will be the best. We’ll imagine entire scenarios well into the future, filled with hazards and mistakes. Likewise, we may picture unreasonably fantastic success. Either way, the likelihood is, it won’t pan out anything like you fear or hope for.

So, we straddle the stepping stones. We keep one foot here, as we step there, and don’t commit to either. Just in case. We can’t let go of the past, for fear of the unknown future. Yet we bounce between the two, back and forth, and forget to live in the Now.

There are so many influencing factors that we simply don’t have to hand right now, and therefore we can’t calculate into the equation. Try as we might, there is no right or wrong about any of it. We have to take the next step. Trust that the next bit of information we need to take the following step will be presented to us. And then we can take the next step after that.

Planning, setting goals, and making the ‘right’ choices in advance is like trying to predict the lottery. Imagine trying to select the winning numbers as if your life depended on it. How stressful would that be? It’s an impossible task. Similarly, trying to predict our future, or what is the best decision, is pretty much futile. We actually don’t know how it will turn out.

We just have to decide. Take action. And build life step-by-step, trusting that each stepping stone will ultimately take us to a good place. And enjoy every stepping stone along the way!

Stepping Stones © September 14, 2011 | Annie Zalezsak

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Intuitive Impulse

Driving along toward a certain destination, there is a sudden impulse to take the next left turn. No signs prompting, no clear reason ‘why’, just intuition screaming, “turn left now!”. If I resist, it will continue to nag me until I turn back, or until another opportunity arises that will lead me to that same place. Call it fate or destiny. Call it spiritual guidance. Call it insanity. To control it is futile. All roads lead to the same place. It’s inevitable.

Whether I choose to turn now or later, in this life or the next, there is something that my eyes need to see, my ears need to hear, my heart needs to feel. That turn beckons and it won’t let me go until I surrender to it completely, without bargaining conditions, without negotiation, without my ego getting in the way of its message.

Even though it takes me off my planned route, even though it makes no sense to my head or even to my heart, my gut rules. Instincts and intuition force my hands to shift the steering wheel leftward. I find myself on an unknown road leading who-knows-where. It’s quaint. It’s pretty. I still don’t know why I am there. I go as far as the road takes me, until gut says to turn back. About a mile. Nothing all that eventful happens. Maybe the detour just places me in the right space and time at some future point elsewhere. This is something we cannot even guess at sensibly.

Trusting the intuitive impulse is the point. It doesn’t have to make sense to our logic. Our brains cannot understand the incomprehensible Grand Scheme of Things. As individual human beings, it is simply our duty to trust our instincts, to go with the flow, to follow the intuitive impulses that guide us as if by some cosmic awareness our human mind is not privied to in its entirety.

Forget the sat navs and the gps systems. Without the gadgets, without support systems, we all only have one thing to rely on. Our own inner intuitive impulse. Trust it.

Intuitive Impulse © March 19, 2011 | Annie Zalezsak