As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed that menus are using smaller print than they used to. Road signs also have reduced font size over the years! Fortunately, my eye doctor has been able to help me adjust to these changes by prescribing lenses that sharpen my vision.
Being able to see clearly helps us to navigate our way through the daily tasks of driving, reading emails, ordering off a menu, and recognizing the faces of family members and friends. But as important as having good vision is for interacting with the outer world, having a clear vision into our own hearts and souls is even more crucial.
Psychologist C.J. Jung once stated, “Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakes.”
As Jung rightfully observes, learning to peer into our own depths is crucial if we are to awaken to our true calling and purpose in life. That truth was spoken into me several years ago when I was in the midst of vocational confusion. I had been a pastor at a church for a number of years and was trying to discern if it was time to go to another congregation. I spent several months looking at church profiles on our denomination’s website to see if anything grabbed hold of me.
Nothing, however, seemed to provide a way forward from my feeling that some sort of change was needed in my life. One day, these words arose within me: “Bryan, what you are looking for isn’t around you, but within you.”
I was thinking a new address, a new geography, a new external challenge was what I needed. But the Voice within me pointed me in a new direction—into my own heart. And I realized that the journey I needed to take was an interior one.
Awakening to what’s inside us provides the greatest adventure of life. Our inner landscape is a place that invites us to explore and discover our deepest and truest self and to live out of that place of our authentic self.
While it would be nice if you could put on a pair of glasses to look to our own hearts, different skills and practices are required for this kind of seeing. Having taken this inner journey of awakening, helping others to look inside and to embody what they discover is the calling that has claimed me.
Soul musings:
–What do see as the difference between dreaming and awakening? What helps you to look inside?
