What Have You Opened To?

As I look back on my life, I realize that I have experienced Openings many times before. I just did not see them in that way. Openings have evolved my journey to where I am now.

Openings Are Necessary To Our Journey

Let’s look at classic notions about The Hero’s Journey in literature and other mediums as they relate to Openings. In The Hero’s Journey there is a hero. The hero is called to adventure. The hero can accept or reject the call, as long as it remains before them.  Once the hero accepts the call (or walks through the Opening) the journey begins. Along the way there are allies, tests, enemies, growth and challenges. At the journey’s end the hero has changed in powerful ways.

Where is our growth to come from if we do not identify and walk through Openings? Some say that our modern world lives on borrowed knowledge, rather than direct experience. Openings offer us experience. By acknowledging the power of Openings and embracing them, we advance.

Think of the Openings you have experienced. Who would you be if you had not said yes to them? Would you have grown? Think also of the Openings you said no to. How did they affect your life? Who would you be if you had said yes to them? Did saying no create new Openings?

Openings Provide Opportunities

An Opening is an invitation to go somewhere new. An Opening may come in the form of an insight, a dramatic change, a person we meet, an expansion or contraction in our life or a new chance at something we have attempted before. The nature and speed of our journey rests on how we respond to these invitations. If we look away, ignore them or fear them, they can disappear. Some Openings may return and some may not.

We may not walk through every Opening. We have a choice to say yes or no. Our choice reflects where we are mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually at the time the Opening presents itself. In that choice, we directly influence the nature of our journey.

Think back to times in your life when Openings appeared. Identify them and then look at how you responded to them. How did your choices influence your journey? It may be that you had a job offer, a chance to move to a new geographic location, an opportunity to study with a teacher or otherwise learn something new. It may be that you had an invitation to enter a new relationship or friendship.

Openings Create Forward Motion

Our journey is meant to be dynamic, not static. We are meant to grow and learn, from our birth until our death. The pace we move at depends on the Openings presented to us and the ones that we seek. Say you have an Opening to study somewhere in a foreign country. There may be good reasons to decline the invitation. Or, you may say yes with the expectation that you will grow immensely from experiencing a new environment.

Turning back once we have said yes to an Opening is not failure. Just recognizing and walking through the Opening changes us. It may be that we were meant to walk only a short distance. Or, that circumstances suddenly changed. Another Opening may have appeared to quicken our journey. There are no set rules about how we approach Openings. They appear to help keep us in motion.

Think of the Openings you have said yes to in the past. What came from them? Do you think you moved forward in your journey because of them? Did you experience pain, joy or other emotions that changed you? Did the motion that occurred serve you or make you pause? Even in pausing you grow.

We Can Consciously Cultivate Our Ability To Identify Openings

In this era of change, Openings are everywhere. They lie in the isolation created by the pandemic, in the increased pressures on essential workers, in the grief and change caused by illnesses and deaths, in the changes in the nature of our comfort zones, in new systems being developed and in the extra space and time available to us, as the world slows down.

Fear can blur the Openings before us. We may have to address and conquer fear and develop new ways of being in order to see them. The Openings that exist before us now are not taking us to places we already know. They are taking us into a new world being created by the change that surrounds us.