walking your divine path

In the recent past, I reached out to a mentor of mine to ask about a particular spiritual gift I noticed on her energy. When she wrote back, she noted that when she looked into my energy, that my foot chakras were open and glowing gold--a sign to her that I am walking on my divine path.

Foot chakras. Image here.

This was such an incredible validation to me, but I didn't need her to tell me to know it was true. For some time now--maybe a few months--I've felt very strongly that I am doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. Every day has felt very "led." Even the hard stuff isn't hard--at least, most of the time!

So the question comes: how do you prepare to live your divine path? People I work with ask me that and it's something I've been pondering a lot.

This is what I've concluded: You begin to walk your divine path only after you agree to stop walking your path.

When you can live by faith in the divine, instead of faith in yourself, you begin to walk your divine path.

Personal Experience

My life changed radically after God told me in no uncertain terms to uproot everything about myself that I liked. At first I fought it, but then I agreed to do it because He said so, but at the time I wasn't sure what would happen, or even what would be left of me after the changes took place.

As it turned out, uprooting my own flaws, to the extent that I did, opened up space in myself for the Holy Spirit to work.

I had always considered myself a spiritual person, and I was, but I think what had happened was I had fallen into the rut of feeling spiritual because I had lots of spiritual experiences, rather than living by the Spirit or allowing those spiritual experiences to change me.

Spiritual rebirth. Image here.

How many times have you come home from church feeling spiritually reborn? Let me put it this way: I'd had that feeling maybe a few times prior to 2014, but in the past six months, I've felt it over and over again. I may just be slow or something--we all know that we're supposed to feel that way every week, and for all I know everyone else does--but for me it took a radical change of heart and change of perspective in order to transition from merely feeling the Spirit at church and in my life to living by the Spirit. And let's be real: I'm not 100% living by the Spirit. I still have a ways to go to get there. But I am way closer to that reality now than I was before my radical change of heart.

Living by Faith

How does one begin to live by faith?


That's a trick question. Everyone already DOES live by faith! The real question is, where do you put your faith? Is it in God, or in man?

Is it in God, or in yourself?

Is it in God, or in your boss, or in your spouse, or in your business, or in your church leaders?

Is it in God, or in consensus reality?

Abinadi. Image here.

Do you have faith in prayer, or in God? Because sometimes God doesn't answer prayers the way we want. Faith in anything except God is doomed for failure.

But faith in God will always lead to success--if not in this life, than the next. (I always think of Abinadi here. Did he have a great ending on Earth? No, unless getting burned at the stake sounds like your idea of a great way to go. But he accomplished his life mission, walked his divine path, continues to inspire millions of people today and surely has a huge reward in store in heaven. He just goes to show that walking your divine path may not be easy at all--but it is still worth it.)

So how does one live by faith in God?

The first step has to be clearing out the internal obstacles to faith. In my case, I had to start with pride, and then doubt. I had a lot of pride in a lot of things. At the time, I didn't realize that's what it was, but looking back on it, what God was telling me to change was my pride. It just so happened that my pride had led me to a certain type of lifestyle that was not conducive to living by faith. It wasn't a bad lifestyle, necessarily; I was still worthy of the Holy Spirit and felt the Spirit on a daily basis. It was just that I hadn't been allowing that spirit to work in me the way I should have been. When I uprooted my pride and changed my lifestyle to match, a whole new level of revelation, perception, and lifestyle just kind of happened.

After that, the next step was doubt: my biggest life changes came after I told God that from now on, I was going to embrace not just the things that I knew were promptings of the Holy Spirit, but also all things that seemed to occur to me from a non-logical, non-rational place. I told God: "I'm just going to embrace everything that comes into my head, especially if it doesn't make sense--so DON'T LET ME THINK ANYTHING WRONG!!" :o)  As soon as I made that commitment, as soon as both pride and doubt were gone, things were exceptionally different for me.

Feeling Crazy
  
Here's the thing about walking a divine path:

A lot of times, it feels crazy.

How do you think Abinadi felt when he was told to preach to the men who wanted to kill him?

Noah building the ark. Image here.

How do you think Lehi felt when he was told to leave all his riches and his business and friends behind in Jerusalem and travel in the wilderness?

How did Moses feel while wandering in the desert for 40 years?

How did Noah feel while constructing the Ark?

How did Sarah feel when she was told she'd conceive a son in her old age?

How did Joseph feel while he was interpreting dreams from his prison cell?

I bet that they had moments where they felt a little bit crazy.

How else are you supposed to feel? When you spend decades building an Ark that's supposed to house literally one of every single species on the Earth, because of a flood that no one believes will come?

How are you supposed to feel when your wife and sons think you're crazy for abandoning your wealth in the holy city in favor of wandering the desert in search of a promised land?

How are you supposed to feel when you're way past child-bearing but God makes you the promise of children?

Well, you're supposed to feel peace and faith. But people mock, and don't understand, and so I bet that from time to time, even the prophets and their wives felt weary and wondered at the things they were required to do. I bet they felt the weight of their friends' and neighbors' and family members' judgment. But they kept walking.

Conclusion

Lehi's dream. Image here.

Walking your divine path may not be easy, but it is simple. I highly recommend reading the account of Lehi's dream and Nephi's interpretation of it to more fully understand--but it comes down to listening to and obeying God's word, even and especially when those around start to mock.

God rarely tells us to do things that are easy. His goal for us is growth, and as they say, there is no growth in the comfort zone and no comfort in the growth zone! Following God with all of your heart lands you firmly in the growth zone--which can seem uncomfortable at first. But God is in the growth zone and He is there to comfort us if we trust Him.

Trust Him!

Walk your divine path!

I love this rendition of Lehi's dream. Image here.