Where’s your compass?

A couple of weeks ago, one of my life coaches me asked a great question: “Where do you look for direction?” … the question was posed in profound personal growth / life’s purpose context. I didn’t not even reflect on the question before answering, “my heart songs”.

two humans listening to their heart songs and connecting

After some reflection, I thought my response could be interpreted as an arrogance, another self-righteous all knowing typical human. But that would be the opposite of my intention and understanding.

Other humans have prompted us to look within and listen:

  • Rumi: “Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.”
  • Kahlil Gibran: “When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”
  • Victor Hugo: “Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.”
  • George Eliot: “Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.”

I have two key assumptions to support finding truth in one’s inner voice.

First, eudaemonia as I define it means ‘living in balance with the god within’. If the god is within, and it is speaking, how could it be false or untrue, or as the classical greeks might say, ‘off target’?

Second, living by an internal compass governed by the god within stays true over time and aligned with one’s inner growth; compared to the ever-changing external compasses provided by our culture that responds to stimuli unknown and unknowable and for results / outcomes maybe not in our best interests – physically or spiritually.

If eudaemonia is my life’s goal, which it is, and there is truly god-within, why would anybody look elsewhere for direction?

Ah … the skeptical cynic would chime in and articulate that it’s too easy for the message between the god-within and my brain to get confused and repurposed for my selfish arrogant objectives. True enough, yet I respond … but how would that be anything close to eudaemonia? Cleaning out those distortions and translation errors – god to brain – is a mindful life’s work. My life’s practice is listening better to my own heart-songs….

Where is your moral compass, and where do you look? Could we each do better and listen carefully?

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