Running the risk

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I am conscious that in writing this blog, I am sharing my own heart – not theory, not things that I learned by rote somewhere else, not someone else’s words, but that which I have come to believe, through experience, through learning, through listening, through my mistakes and through my triumphs. If I am honest, there are moments when I want to draw back, to hide what I believe, to keep it safe from public scrutiny. I want to protect myself from scorn, or even from honest questioning. I fear being misunderstood, or that people will make assumptions and jump to conclusions about what they assume I have said – or what I believe.

There are moments when I truly fear the effects of standing up to be counted for what I believe.

Paulo Coelho says in the book “Manual of the Warrior of Light”;

A warrior of light is reliable.
He makes a few mistakes, he sometimes thinks he is more important than he
really is, but he does not lie.
When people gather round the fire, he talks to his friends, male and female. He
knows that his words are stored in the memory of the Universe, like a testimony of
what he thinks.
And the warrior asks himself: ‘Why do I talk so much, when often I am
incapable of carrying out everything I say?’
His heart replies: ‘When you defend your ideas in public, you then have to
make an effort to live accordingly.’
It is because he believes that he is what he says he is that the warrior ends up
becoming precisely that.

There are things that I may talk about where I haven’t ‘got there’ yet. There are things that I understand to be true that I have yet to fully experience. And as I bring those things out and talk more about what I sense to be true – then I call upon myself to live from that pattern. I know I will not get it right all the time – but I will be one step closer each day.

Each one of us have to make the decision – in small ways, or in bigger ways, to stand up and defend what we believe. That may mean that we intervene when something is obviously wrong. That may mean that we need to speak our mind instead of opting for an easier life. That may mean speaking our truth when we would rather not. And yet, I hope and pray that when each of us do speak our truth, that we will find the opportunity to learn from each other. That rather than retreating behind dogma and prejudice, we will simply and openly look to listen to each other.

Each one of us holds a fragment of the totality of truth in our hands. Each one of us is wiser than we know. And only by listening will truth be known.