I’m going to share with you a passage from one of my favourite books, Anam Cara, by the great John O’Donohue, titled: “One of the greatest sins is the unlived life.”
This passage touches me deeply and reminds me to follow my heart courageously.
May these words catalyse action and move you towards your dreams.
In the Western tradition we were taught many things about the nature of negativity and the nature of sin, but we were never told that one of the greatest sins is the unlived life.
We are sent into the world to live to the full everything that awakens within us and everything that comes towards us.
It is a lonely experience to be at the deathbed of someone who is full of regret; to hear him say how he would love another year to do the things his heart has always dreamed of but believed he could never do until he retired. He had always postponed the dream of his heart.
There are many people who do not live the lives they desire.
Many of the things that hold them back from inhabiting their destiny are false. These are only images in their minds. They are not real barriers at all. We should never allow our fears or the expectations of others to set the frontiers of our destiny.
We are so privileged to have time. We have but one life, and it is a shame to limit it by fear and false barriers.
Irenaeus, a wonderful philosopher and theologian in the second century, said: ‘The glory of god is the human person fully alive.’
It is lovely to imagine that real divinity is the presence in which all beauty, unity, creativity, darkness and negativity are harmonised. The divine has such passionate creativity and instinct for the fully inhabited life.
If you allow your nature to come alive, then everything will come into rhythm. If you live the life you love, you will receive shelter and blessings. Sometimes, the great famine of blessings in and around us derives from the fact that we are not living the life we love but rather the life that is expected of us. We have fallen out of rhythm with the secret signature and light of our own nature.
The shape of each soul is different. There is a secret destiny for each person. When you endeavor to repeat what others have done or force yourself into a pressed mound, you betray your individuality.
We need to return to solitude within, to find again the dream that lies at the hearth of the soul. We need to feel the dream with the wonder of a child approaching a threshold of discovery. When we rediscover our childlike nature, we enter into a world of gentle possibility. Consequently, we will find ourselves more frequently at a place of ease, delight and celebration. The false burdens fall away.
We come into rhythm with ourselves.
Our clay shape gradually learns to walk beautifully on this magnificent earth.
Keep rising,
Caspar
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