The Journey

It’s been over 40 years now in my search for safety. I can quite honestly say I have searched everywhere I know to look, both high and low. I have looked for it in parents, family, the religion of my youth; I have looked for it in education, career choices, various communities, and in money; I have sought it in relationships of every kind. I have searched for it extensively in other people: close friendships, boyfriends, teachers, healers and therapists. I have scoured the vaults of spiritual traditions and spiritual teachers. I have found some clues along the way and at times discovered balms for my weary soul. I have gained great insight and uncovered profound truths. But never safety. Never the profoundly deep experience of relaxation and security that my bones and my heart longed for. All along the way, all they could really do was point me toward the source. —>

As it turns out…It’s me. The safety I seek can only be found within myself. I have only just realized this in the months since I broke free.

I don’t mean this in an airy-fairy, philosophical, or even a woo-woo way. I mean it literally. And I am still learning to trust and understand it. There is something within me that is more real and more reliable than anything else in the world and I can depend upon it 100% of the time. I am learning to do so.

I am my own caretaker, my own best friend, my closest confidant, my greatest advocate and my wisest guardian. There is a voice within my heart and my mind that clearly guides me in the best direction to go. It comforts me when I am sad or lost or lonely. It gives me hope and determination and purpose. Some may call it Intuition, others may say Inner Voice, and still others may call it the Voice of God. I don’t really care what it’s called so I haven’t labeled it. All I can tell you is that it’s there for me but it’s also a part of me. It is not separate and yet it is a greater entity to which I can turn at any given moment. And it is wholly and completely safe.

When I go to this place within myself, I am found, I am secure. And that is where my safety lies. I am coming to accept that no person will ever be able to provide safety for me. Nor will any place or any situation. No matter how right or how wrong things may go in my life, the sense of safety I seek will only ever be found within my own being. And now…now I am committed to listening to the wise guidance that source of safety provides.

The precariousness of this life is certain and I don’t think I’ll ever feel safe on this earth. This place wasn’t built for that, which is why I’ll never find it in anything here. But I am both shocked and relieved to discover that some sense of safety does seem to exist after all and I can access it anytime I choose.

Under the influence of my “teacher,” I was taught not to trust my own mind. On more than one occasion I was told that I shouldn’t listen to my own mind because “your mind is a bad neighborhood to be in.” This concept was a cheap ripoff of the idea that our mind is just our ego and our ego is bent on keeping us miserable (more on this to come). But the fact is that the voice of Truth also speaks in our minds and this is the only thing that we can wholeheartedly trust without reservation. That voice has been trying to offer me safety and security all along. That voice told me that something was wrong, that it is right to be free, that I am equal, that I deserve to be happy, that I should run, run, run from my prison long ago. That voice finally, eventually, won out, but only once I began to listen to it, against the advice of my “teacher.”

All this is to say, there are a lot of forces in this world that would have us not trust our own internal wisdom and intuition, forces that would keep us preoccupied in the rat race of life and subservient to their desires, forces that will be ever changing, always precarious and far from safe. Any person who tries to sell you safety, for your being or your soul, through their own dictated standards, methods or procedures is a person to be wary of. Let this be a red flag to us all that safety cannot be bought through your body or your words or your deeds.

But safety itself is still possible and still attainable, I believe. It’s just waiting here in the last place I thought to look, the last place I ever thought I could trust, the place I was warned against time and again. Because I am at my core good and genuine, honest and real, I can trust myself completely. And in that trust there is total safety. I can feel it, right here, inside of me.