Category Archives: Three Truths and One Wish

Three Truths and One Wish

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As I mentioned yesterday, today is movie day with my mom. I am leaving early in the morning to drive over to the valley, so I have set this post, which I actually put together yesterday, to auto-publish.

As I was trying to come up with my own three truths, I kept coming back to things I’d seen recently, written by three other amazing women. Statements profound and precise, phrases that cracked me wide open, my heart spilling over it’s edges, becoming equally softer and more fierce with their force, their rightness. So today’s three truths are not my words, but they are certainly my truths.

1. Truth from Susan Piver: who you really are is the offering. She sent this one in the Open Heart Project Practitioner newsletter on the day I arrived in Portland for the World Domination Summit (WDS). Reading this, and later remembering it gave me such comfort as I approached that event.

Being genuine, letting who you are rise to the surface, is actually the point of the spiritual path. We don’t meditate to become great meditators. We meditate to become who we really are… As it turns out, this is also how we offer our most precious gifts to this world. And when there is one genuine-hearted warrior in the room, it calls forth the genuineness of others. Thus it is an act of compassion to simply be yourself.

2. Truth from Fiona at Writing Our Way Home: you aren’t alone. Oh wow. This is exactly how I felt the first day of WDS, how I feel so often, but I have never been able to describe it so smartly.

I always feel wobbly in new groups. I want strangers to know how brilliant I am, to feel that I am contributing something valuable, & to love me. I can wait around five minutes for this to happen.

This can be challenging if they have already known each other for many years, or don’t really need anything, or are human beings.

3. Truth from Cheryl Stayed, as Dear Sugar: all that time was not wasted. This one makes me cry every time I read it.

The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.

One wish: That we all realize, recover or remember who we really are, brilliant and precious exactly as we are, messy and stinky, a little broken and bruised, “tiny beautiful things” that are a gift, an offering, a wish and a prayer and a promise, every one of us.

Three Truths and One Wish

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1. Truth: You are capable of so much more. Whatever you think you can do or have or be, whatever you imagine, your opportunity and potential are so much more than that, so much bigger. Whoever you want to meet, whatever you want to learn, wherever you want to go, whatever you want to accomplish is possible, so invite it, try, at the very least begin to entertain the idea, dream, plan, wish. Take that first step, some tiny action that manifests your intention, focuses your attention.

Of course, things don’t always turn out as we planned, and our imagination is limited, so once we start, we have to keep ourselves open to what arises, not try to force or control an outcome, and be realistic, because you can wish all you want to be a unicorn or meet a hobbit or be a foot taller, but none of those things are going to literally happen. And yet,

I am larger, better than I thought;
I did not know I held so much goodness.
~Walt Whitman

2. Truth: You are already free. All of the limitations and restrictions you put on yourself, your possibility and potential, are of your own creation. You are afraid, so you tell yourself “can’t” or “impossible.” You think you must earn love and belonging (rather than believing it is your birthright), so you tell yourself “should” and “have to” and “no.” You do all this even though the truth is that you are able to try anything and are already enough.

If we cannot give up our lives to something larger than ourselves – to
something larger than the conditioned mind that we imagine is who we
are – then we cannot be free. ~Justin McKay

3. Truth: You are the only thing in your way. If you are waiting for something to happen, stop waiting and happen. Take the first step, make a start, do one small thing. Show up and remain open to the possibility of the moment. Allow your heart, your gut, your intuition, your innate wisdom and compassion, love to guide you. Move out of the way and allow your basic goodness to manifest, as it naturally and organically will if you would only step aside.

You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way. ~Richard Bach

One wish: That we can get out of our own way and realize our full potential. That we can manifest in the world that which we were born to be and do.