Living Without Excuses

Living with intention carries with it a corollary: living without excuses. 

A friend of mine jokes "Growing older isn't for sissies."  Neither is living with intention.  Evolving one's soul is serious work, and by its very nature requires abandonment of our normal way of living.  We surrender to what the soul knows it is becoming.  To say that terror may strike in the heart is an understatement.

Living with intention demands that we listen to the heart and not the head.  Doing what we intuitively know is right may be counter-rational to everything we have known, and yet we must.  As our white-knuckled fingers hold who we have been in a death-grip, the heart whispers a love song of peace and joy.  Surrender to who you might be.

I would like to say I have lived without regret, but in truth, there are things that I've had to leave behind that still recall sadness. The somewhat nomadic existence, which has resulted, leaves me envious of friends, who are surrounded with people that have been with them for their entire lives.  Yet, I know I would not have done anything differently, not for a second.

Twenty years ago in July, I sat on the edge of a water fountain eating frozen yogurt in the sunshine.  In an instant I knew that I was to leave the town I'd called home for a decade.  Where was I to go?  A city on the opposite side of the country where I knew no one. Before I arrived, the Universe had littered my path with new friends.  I had apparent means to earn money, but I had faith and I followed...and so did the work.  Characteristic of living with intention is that I had to take the leap before I knew if and how things would work out.  I still have no clue "why?" for those driven by that question.

To say my move was counter-rational may be an understatement.  Some friends in my old home town made up that I'd fallen in love with a man in the new city, and I was moving there to be with him.  They could not make sense that I had just listened to my heart and followed where it led me--a strange city where I knew no one.  They could not begin to understand the terror in my heart as I took to the highway to drive across the country. 

I miss my old friends--part of the sadness, but I do keep in touch with some of them.  But, no amount of gossip or fear of lack of livelihood would have been excuse enough for me to abandon the path being laid forth before me.  Living without excuses, and just letting the chatter of the world fall away. Surrendering to the call of divine love.  That is what it means to live with intention.