Answering the Call

I am at a place in my life where I can FEEL myself being called … I know deep in my heart that following this inner voice is all that really matters … I can hear and FEEL its LOVE, TRUTH and PURITY in every resounding echo of my name … yet somehow, try as I might to follow the path to the voice, it is somehow just out of reach.

I see myself as being on a forest path exploring contentedly … I begin to hear my name being called from somewhere across the forest. It is like a whisper and it is a sound that is felt more than it is heard. It calls with an urgency that takes me back to my childhood bedroom where I have overslept and am in danger of missing the school bus. My mother’s hand is on my shoulder and she is insistently shaking me awake, “Lisa, wake up! Lisa, come on … hurry!” There is an urgency in her voice … this is important … wake up! Get moving!

There is a desire to roll over, settle into the cloud of my pillow, pull the covers over my head and stay in my comfortable dream world yet the insistence of my mother’s voice pulls me out of the bed, my feet hitting the floor already running, rushing through the morning routines and then out the door, to the bus stop. These morning motions were well rehearsed and automatic. I already knew what to do as I had done it countless times before, so when rushed, with no time to think about my morning rituals, I completed them automatically and found myself, a little breathless yet still prepared, at the bus stop waiting for the bus to arrive.

So now, a big girl, I find myself in the forest, walking on trails that have been made by people who were here before me. From somewhere in the distance I hear my name being called. My Mother is again calling to me, “Lisa, wake up! Come on! Hurry! Over here!” I take the first steps on the trail that leads in the direction the voice seems to come from. As I walk there is a quickening inside me and my body begins to tingle with something a bit unfamiliar yet warm, loving, true and not at all unwelcome. Hearing the voice and experiencing the act of following it is opening something within me, giving birth to something that has been asleep for a very long time.

I hear the voice whispering again yet this time it is off to the East. The trail I have been following only goes North and South with the first branch that goes in an Easterly direction still way ahead of me. I can go further South to meet the Easterly trail, yet instinct tells me that I will still be traveling away from my destination, or I can turn to the East right here where there is no trail and begin making my own. The choice becomes clear. Following the voice requires that I cut my own trail.

The act of cutting my own trail through the forest is one that, for me, comes with internal conflict. The physical act of using garden shears to snip a briar vine in half, severing its connection to the earth, inhibiting its ability to grow is one that is not taken lightly. Who am I to decide whether this thorny specimen, this vine that reaches out to entangle me in its piercing grasp with each step I take … who am I to decide the fate of this living thing? Why not just stay on the paths that have already been cut? Following existing paths means that such choices – determining the fate of another living specimen – will not be required. Just stay on the path …

Yet my decision to do this, to make the journey to the Voice of my Self by staying safely within the lines that have already been cut gets me no closer to my destination. Over and over again I am shown that the destination cannot be reached by following the paths of the past. I have already covered every inch of these paths and while they have brought me close, the voice is always somewhere just beyond where I am and just out of reach. It has become clear to me that fully experiencing this voice requires me to cut my own trail … even if it requires me to make sacrifices along the way.

With unconditional Love … Love for myself, for the voice of the Mother who calls me and for the tangle of briars that are blocking the path to my true Self, I grasp the thorny vine near the base, take a deep breath, hold it for a minute in prayer and contemplation … and then exhaling a long, slow breath … a breath of “Letting Go” … I cut through the vine … in this first act of loving sacrifice I am truly answering the call.

With love to those before me who courageously followed their own inner voice and answered the call. Your trust in awakening to the voice of your inner self is an inspiration to me. Thank you.

Lisa Buckalew