Welcome and thank you for joining me for this contemplative reflection following your light.
I invite you.
.
.
To take a moment and become still and simply be aware of this present moment.
Have you ever felt something quietly stirring within you?
And in a spark.
A longing to express something that wants to come through you.
The poet David White once asked.
What if the world is holding its breath?
Waiting for you to take the place that only you can fill.
Perhaps,
Like many of us,
Here wondering about your place in the world.
He learned to listen to what was expected.
And what was needed.
What was approved.
To be responsible.
And to be helpful.
To fit in.
And perhaps somewhere along the way,
You learn to make yourself a little smaller.
Not because anyone told you to.
It happened quietly.
A waiting,
A giving away.
And I can do it.
Or I'll wait.
It's okay.
And there's nothing dramatic about dimming our light.
From the outside.
Everything can look perfectly fine.
Reasonable.
Responsible.
Even Loving.
And yet.
.
.
Something within us knows.
When we move away from what is true for us.
Something in us begins to lose its energy.
And when we begin to come home to ourselves,
Something starts to return.
For me,
One of those moments was discovering that qualities I had once considered weaknesses My sensitivity.
My longing for harmony.
My desire to understand different sides.
Were not something I needed to overcome.
They were part of my light.
What are those qualities for you?
And perhaps your light is not something you need to create.
Perhaps it is something you gradually stop hiding.
What if your light has been here all along?
Beneath the roles you have played.
And beneath the expectations.
Beneath the question of whether you are enough.
Or whether it's too late.
Or whether someone else could do it better.
What remains when you become quiet enough to hear yourself?
Perhaps your light does not arrive as a groaned calling.
Perhaps it appears in something very simple.
A word you have been wanting to speak.
I say yes.
Or a no.
A longing you have postponed.
A place where you feel more alive.
Or a person with whom you can be completely yourself?
Or quiet knowing that asks for no explanation.
There may be no need to follow it immediately.
Perhaps for this moment it is enough simply to notice.
What is quietly alive in you?
What wants to be seen?
What wants to be expressed.
And perhaps the deeper question is not,
What should I do with my life?
But what is life asking to live through me?
Each of us carries a unique threat.
Our experiences.
Our gifts.
Our tenderness.
Our history.
Our hopes.
And somehow through all of this,
Life weaves us into something that has never existed before.
There is a place in this unfolding that only you can fill.
Not because you have to become someone special.
Not because you have to prove anything.
Simply because there is no one else who can be exactly you.
Following your light is not about becoming more.
Perhaps it is about becoming less divided from what is already here.
Less hiding.
Less pretending.
Less abandoning yourself.
And more listening.
So for a moment,
Just rest here.
Without needing to know what comes next.
And listen.
What is your light quietly saying?
What is asking to be lived?
What is asking to take its place?
Perhaps there's nothing to figure out.
Perhaps your next step will reveal itself when the time is right.
And perhaps like a light in a darkened room,
It has been quietly shining all along.
What if the world is indeed hell?
Holding its breath.
Waiting for you to take the place.
That only you can fill.
And what if you don't have to become anything to take that place?
You only have to listen.
And to be ready.
Here.
