Let your Compass be your Guide

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

We all have that voice inside us that tells us if we’re going in the right direction for us or not.  Much deeper than Jiminy Cricket’s conscience, this voice of inner knowing acts as the True North of our internal compass.  As we listen and respond to this voice, adjusting our lives as we go along, a sense of trust begins to emerge.
We start to know intrinsically when we’ve made a mistake or taken a detour that isn’t serving us. Sometimes these mistakes and detours teach us how to listen more closely to our inner knowing, though often not until we’ve made the mistake several times.

I had been carrying groceries back home from my local coop for several months before I realized that I was slowly hurting muscles in my shoulders by carrying too much at a time. I kept thinking about buying some kind of cart to help me but felt a bit self-conscious about doing that.  It got to the point that every time I picked up or held anything heavy for a few minutes my right shoulder would start to ache.  Finally I made the shift and started using a utility cart for hauling groceries.

The first day I tried it, it was such a relief!  I thought, this feels so much better and is so much easier. Then I thought, why didn’t I do this before?  That’s what it’s like when you listen to your inner voice. Things get easier. They fall into place, and don’t cause so much struggle. There is an enormous sense of relief and wonder that life can flow more smoothly.
Of course, there are the usual ups and downs, my cart gets stuck on uneven pavement, or I have to go the long way around holes and sidewalk closures. But I’m not struggling and cursing all the way up the hill wishing I was home already.  As Mary Oliver says so beautifully, we do not have to walk through the desert on our knees for a hundred miles, repenting.

One clue in accessing this inner knowing is to follow the trail inward from the outer result that we are looking for into the actual physical sensations and emotions arising in our bodies.  Mary Oliver again, “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”  An example of this is how eating healthily gives our bodies more strength and freedom to move as we exercise, and steadies our moods and ability to concentrate. Losing weight may be the outer goal or result but it is the process, the internal shift, that guides us in learning how to be more loving to ourselves.

As we feel better and our own sense of well-being increases, we have more room to let in our connection to those around us and our outer world. We also make more space for our own connection with ourselves and what our bodies and souls are needing from us.  It is this internal flow of communication that creates a sense of direction for us.  We, like the wild geese are pulled forward by an inner momentum and trust, even though we may not know where we’ll be landing at the end of each day.