Befriending your own wisdom

 There once was a man with a boat. He wanted to go somewhere very important to him, so he put his destination firmly in his sights and set out. He had been told many times to be positive, to never take his eye off his goal, and to trust he was always in the exactly the right place at the right time.

Suddenly he saw rocks ahead… Small jagged black shiny point sticking up out of the water. 'What to do?', he thought. 'I am meant to keep going no matter what, remembering that all will be well and I am being looked after. But this isn't right, surely? My boat will founder on the rocks and I will perish.' Doubt began to seep into his mind. Was he wrong? Were they wrong? What and who was right? Maybe the tide would take him away from the rocks, even if he held his current course...

‘But what if it didn’t?’ was loud in his mind. However, he had also been told to never believe the ‘what ifs’ his mind brought up. “All will be well; everything that happens is for a reason” had also told to him many times.

The rocks loomed ever closer, the tide not appearing to make any difference to his track. The man had been put well and truly on the spot, his spot. Yes, his teachers had had many boldly powerful ideas, but they weren’t in this boat at this time in this place - this situation. 

He suddenly knew something deep inside; that he was his own best teacher; it could only ever be himself who made the right decisions for his own life. And that to do so did not make him bad or wrong to not listen to others. His best ‘other’ was in fact his own wisdom. 

He quickly reckoned that this very wisdom was manifesting itself ever more powerfully as his gut-feeling of “Do something, and fast!” surged, and he swung the tiller round and altered course away from the rocks just in time. 

No, he now wasn’t heading directly for his destination. Yes, it was taking a detour. But he and his vessel were safe and he could now plot another course for his beloved harbour.

As the black tipped rocky points slipped safely by on his starboard side, he smiled; yes, it could be a gift that he was here at this time to realise about his own wisdom, but he saw beyond that... He saw and finally understand that he had always known his own wisdom, and how authentic it had always been. He had simply listened to too much ‘head stuff’ from others to whom he had given himself away through self-doubt, and it was all this that had got in the way of his own knowing-already, and which nearly caused him to founder on the rocks.

As he sailed away into the sunset he smiled at the warm feeling in his heart: no more self-doubt from now on, no more asking and listening to everyone else, and much more listening and trusting his own wisdom, his own knowing-already.