Angeles Arrien: Show Up, Pay Attention to What Has Heart and Meaning, Tell the Truth, Be Open to Outcome

It was many years ago when I first heard of Angeles Arrien and what she speaks to below. From that moment forward I have held the intention of learning to remember and integrate these teachings into the way I live my life. Today, at nearly 64, I deeply recognize how embracing and integrating this wisdom has been profoundly transformative. Deep bow of gratitude. 

May each of us discover and receive that which most nourishes our soul. May we be healing agents in our families, our communities, our nation, and the world.

  

 With warmest blessings ~ Molly

 No One is Immune To Love

Indigenous peoples have wisdom to offer us. In many indigenous cultures, you can find some variation on the following rules, which are intended to make living a life very simple. The first rule is, Show up. Choose to be present to life. Choosing to be present is the skill of the warrior archetype, an old-fashioned term for leadership abilities. The warrior in us chooses to be present to life.

Once we show up, we can go on with rule number two, which is, Pay attention to what has heart and meaning. This rule is associated with the archetype of the healer, the one who recognizes that love is the greatest healing power in the world. When we pay attention to what has heart and meaning, we are opening the arms of love.

When we show up and pay attention to what has heart and meaning, then we can follow the third rule: Tell the truth without blame or judgment. This is the path of the visionary, the one who can give voice to what is so. Telling the truth without blame or judgment is not necessarily being "polite," but the truth-teller does consider timing and context as well as delivery. Truth telling collapses our patterns of denial and indulgence, keeps us authentic.

When we are able to tell the truth, we can go to the fourth rule: Be open to outcome, but not attached to it. This is associated with the archetype of the teacher, who trusts in the unexpected and is able to be detached. Often, in the West, we define "detachment" as "not caring," but detachment is really the capacity to care deeply but objectively. If you've taken the other three steps, then the fourth rule should come naturally, if not always easily: if you have shown up, paid attention to what has heart and meaning, and told the truth without blame or judgment, then it should follow naturally that you can be open, but not attached, to outcome.

None of this is necessarily easy to do. But one of the great joys of soul work is that whether or not we are able to be fully present to life, like keeps calling out to us. No one is immune to the pull of the natural cycles of the universe: no one is immune to love. And because it requires just as much energy, if not more, to stay out of life as it does to be fully engage in it, why not engage?...

No matter how we try, soul calls out to us. We may have become so injured in our instincts, so wounded in our souls, that our demons threaten to overwhelm us, that we cannot quite hear the call of spring. But spring calls to us anyway. The center of our soul work is ensuring that the good, true, and beautiful in our nature is at least as strong as the demons and the monsters; put another way, it is ensuring that my self-worth is at least as strong as my self-critic. That issue is central to all of the indigenous peoples that I have studied. If I am living in a way that feeds the good, true, and beautiful in my nature - as opposed to feeding the self-critic - then I can heal myself. I can stay in touch with my own deep source, my soul. And I can also be a healing agent in my family, my community, my nation, and the world.

- Angeles Arrien

"Walking the Mystical Path with Practical Feet"

Excerpted from Nourishing the Soul: Discovering the Sacred in Everyday Life