LIFE

How Can We Recognize and Live the Universal Truth?

Nature’s tools: eagle-eyes, flow, salmon swimming upstream for a life full of love and happiness.

Living the truth often feels like a waterfall. We don’t know how to hang on. It’s just chaos. Turmoil. We feel powerless and thrown around. We cling to others but do they know where we’re going?

Truth is universal. It has to do with our planet. Our home. Where we live with many species together. Where nature’s laws of (quantum) physics and biology rule. And where we, humans, live a compassionate life of loving our children and finding purpose in our hearts and souls.

This is a story about universal truth.

And about navigating the waterfall.

And don’t worry, I’ll be practical. We can find tools for purpose and tools for dealing with emotions and stress. Happy navigating the waterfall.

Truth is universal. It has to do with our planet. Our home.

Zooming Out

In this story, I told you about facts. How they are true and still show you the wrong way. Truth and trust came along.

The truth is not that difficult. But like the blind men and the elephant, we only see a little part of the whole. And that’s why the truth seems to shift. We don’t recognize what’s what anymore.

We listen to others and that confuses us even more. What’s right, what’s wrong? And then we get all these feelings about it. Shame, guilt, sadness, and anger.

My life was full of it, I must confess.

I worked in business. And I wanted to live a sustainable life. But where to start? Everything I did seemed wrong. And pointless.

I loved walking in nature. But everywhere I saw trash. And when I combined my walks with picking up the trash, I just couldn’t enjoy the beauty of nature anymore.

So I ignored the trash. And felt guilty.

I was always in a hurry. Working at least 50 hours a week, being tired all the time. I really liked my job. The challenges. My colleagues. But I was always on my toes. Trying to keep up. Stress was my middle name. And my health suffered.

So, what was the tool that helped me get out of it? See the universal truth? It was a bird of prey.

When I zoomed out and started to see my life from above, I saw the flow of the world. And I saw many connections in my own life.

I saw how the economy keeps us in certain patterns. Buying patterns. Spending patterns. I saw how goods flow around the world. Being produced, consumed, and ending up as waste, waste, waste.

But I saw much more. I saw my own health suffering from lack of sleep. I saw my connections to others suffering from complicated feelings of attachment and guilt and shame.

I saw the toxic nature of judgments flowing through the world.

Making me sad because most of all, I judged myself too harshly. And I judged others. Thinking I was right. Not realizing that my perspective on the universal truth was just different. I was on a different stretch of the road, I had a different lens. And their view of the world was just as right as mine.

That sadness gave me my second important tool. A machete.

I saw toxic judgments flowing through the world.

What’s Mine and What’s Yours?

The world is a tangled mess. And when I saw it from above, it still looked mighty complicated. All these opinions and goods and perspectives overflowing the world. Finding their own paths in between rocks. Muddying the waters, fogging up my glasses, and changing the weather.

I saw my own personal path from above. And I saw that it was a beautiful, meandering path heavily overgrown by weeds. I realized that if I would chop away the weeds that weren’t mine, I would be able to see much clearer where I was going.

So I dived down and landed in my own life again. My feet firmly on the ground of our beautiful planet. And I began chopping the overgrowth from my path with my machete.

I made a few decisions.

• From now on, I would be my own best friend and not judge myself harshly anymore. Any thought, any feeling would be welcome. I would watch the thought in my head and let go. I would feel the feeling in my body, pinpoint the place where it hurt physically, and let go
• I put myself on a news diet. I stopped reading papers, watching the news, and scrolling social media. It gave my mind and my energy body space to heal. Only after about one year, I picked up again. Little by little. Being very mindful about overload
• The words ‘must’ and ‘have to’ disappeared from my dictionary. From now on, I would live my life on my own terms. Not caring what others would think. They have a different perspective anyway. So why would their opinion influence my life?

Of course, it took me a while to heal. I quit my job. I became a freelancer and embraced being alone in nature. In order to keep my head above the water, I cut my spendings to a bare minimum.

Life is expensive. But if I want to balance money, time, and freedom in the future, I first need to get my priorities straight. And living on the edge of comfort and luxury is a great way of finding out what works for me.

I put myself on a news diet. Creating space to heal.

A machete is a great tool for untangling emotional issues as well.

Every time I arrived in an emotional tangle, I asked myself a question. Is this mine? Or is it yours? I leave everything that’s not mine with the other person.

It’s just not my responsibility.

If you want help with anything, you can ask. If you don’t ask, I won’t interfere. Even when you ask, I will be careful not to take away your own responsibility. You have the right to live your own life in your own way. And sort out your mess any way you choose.

Care and Responsibility

The bird of prey and the machete helped me sort out my messy life. And when my path became a little clearer, I had a lot of help from the words care and responsibility.

If something is mine, it’s my responsibility to handle it. So I do.

And it became clearer and clearer what I really care about.

When I lived as an anti-squatter, my environment was full of trash. And it bothered me. I didn’t cause the trash, but every week I spent a few hours cleaning my environment.

Sometimes people asked me why. And I answered: I care about my direct surroundings. So I got to know the trees and the bushes intimately and freed their roots from plastic packaging and ropes and whatever else people had left there.

It gave me lots of joy to care deeply for my place.

But I also decided that I would not do that everywhere. I need the beauty of nature as food for my soul. So all my other nature walks, I ignore trash and only sense the beauty. Whatever you give attention grows. So me paying attention to beauty is as important as me picking up trash.

I cannot take all the woes of the world on my shoulders.

I need my energy for other things.

The Salmon Swims Upstream

Okay, one more tool then. I adopted the wisdom of the salmon.

Most of the time, I go with the flow. I accept everything that comes my way. Deal with the pain it sometimes causes. And enjoy the wonders. My life is beautiful now. I attracted a wonderful man to share my life with and I have a great relationship with his daughters and grandchildren.

Every day, I say thank you for all that comes my way. Beautiful things and painful things. I feel them and let go.

But I see more than just my own life from above. I see all of our nations making a tangled mess of things. Causing confusion. Making things important that are not. Feeding our egos. Venting our anger. Muddying the waters.

I’m definitely not a conspiracy thinker. I don’t think anybody does this on purpose. Most people are trustworthy. They just have different perspectives and they don’t create the calmness in their beings to deal with their thoughts and emotions.

They cling to fear. Fear of not having enough. Fear of losing loved ones. Fear of dying. I’ve had those fears for a long time.

Upstream swimming helps. With our eagle eyes, we see that a lot of our problems are caused by economic flows. We adopt business models with lots of waste. We ship our goods over the world, so we protect them by many layers of packaging.

If we swim upstream, we all have the power to do something about this.

• We can make our lives simple and stop buying unnecessary stuff
• We can buy local with as little packaging as possible. We can bring our own reusable bags. We can buy our food directly from the farmer
• We can make a statement by leaving the packaging in the store. They can complain to their supplier and something might change in the whole upstream supply chain

Much more impactful than picking up trash.

Can you see the downstream and upstream?

Downstream is when you keep applying bandages. Picking up trash without doing anything about the cause. Upstream is making a change in the system by protesting in the right spot. Be mindful of where to spend our money.

Most people are trustworthy.

Be Your Own Guru

All I can say is: follow your own salmon-wisdom. Stop following gurus and experts. They have been taught to go downstream all the time. And they fail to see the connections.

• Zoom out often. Watch your path and decide what’s important in your life
• Empower yourself not to feel small
• Go with the flow. Not clinging to others or the rocks but making a clear distinction between what’s mine and what’s yours
• Embrace care and responsibility.
• If you’re confused, adopt salmon-wisdom and find upstream solutions
• Life’s a journey. One step forward is enough for now. The next step will become clear tomorrow.

Happy flying! Happy swimming!

If you want to connect, you can find me with my feet dangling in the river. Or via LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, ManyStories or my website.

© Désirée Driesenaar