Hi everyone!!

Thank you all for being so patient as I haven’t written in almost a month. I have been busy with yoga, visiting my family, and also taking care of myself. But I am back! Hope you have all been well:) This week I am going to talk about following your heart/staying true to yourself. This may sound easy but is actually very hard for most of us to do. Our heart knows deep down what we truly need, what it is in this life that we are supposed to do. But most of us forget to listen or choose not to listen to it.

All of the answers that we continuously search outward for such as in other people, material objects, teachers, books, technology, etc. lie within our hearts. I have spoken about this before and I will always continue to do so because this is very important. A lot of us listen to the voice in our heads which is mostly run by the ego and not the truth within our souls. This voice in our heads can sound accurate and like it is coming from us, but if we actually take some time to listen to what it is saying and think about where it is coming from, we can see that it is not actually us and only a fabrication that the mind has created!

One way to quiet this voice and begin to listen to the heart is through meditation. Just taking a few minutes out of the day for self-study or svadhyaya can tell you a lot about what you are actually feeling. Taking a few deep breaths and centering yourself. Feeling the way your body reacts to certain thoughts, words, outside stimulants can also tell you a lot about what may or may not be good for you. We are all energies and everything around us are also energies; our bodies know the difference between positive and negative energies and vibrations, its just about listening and acknowledging this. Pretty cool, ya?!

Once we can center ourselves and come back to our bodies instead of hanging up in the clouded minds inside our heads we can begin to feel the strong sensations within our hearts. The quiet voice that lives within and knows what you truly need, who you truly are. All we have to do is listen. You can also ask your heart how it is feeling (internally or externally, it doesn’t really matter). All that matters is that you acknowledge and feel what this voice is trying to tell you. You may not like what it has to say because sometimes the truth isn’t what our ego wants to hear! The truth can make us uncomfortable and fearful but these feelings are not us, just another layer of the ego that we must shed. When we can breath and let go of this fear that we may feel from learning the truth; this is when we truly begin to step into our power.

Following your heart can be tricky and at times difficult. Its not all romance and jetting off on some whimsical adventure like they show in the movies (thank you commercial movie industry). Most of the time it is diving into your biggest fears of letting other people down (this is also only an illusion), sacrificing relationships, leaping into the unknown without knowing how it will all work out. Yes it can be scary at the time, but the best things in this life usually are. To get where I am now I had to stop listening to the opinions of others, sell all of my stuff, say goodbye to people I loved not knowing if and when I would ever see them again, quit my jobs, and fly to the Hawaiian Islands not really knowing why exactly I was going there in the first place. I didn’t know what I would find, just that my heart wanted me to go! If I didn’t listen to it, I knew I would continue to be unhappy. And yes, people said I was crazy to not get a “real job”, save money, live out of two backpacks, and move to an island where I knew no one. But it was the best decision I ever made!

We are all on different journeys and no one can say what is right for you, but you!! No one knows how to live your life better than you. So stop listening to the opinions of others, and start listening to your heart. Listen to this, go inward, breathe deeply. It will never lead you astray. Yes the road can be tough, nothing worthwhile is ever easy. It’s all about remembering to be grateful for the present moment, and everything in-between. We are all only in this human experience for a short while, so we might as well do what we actually are meant to do, instead of what we “think” we should do.

I am at a point in my journey again where my heart calls me to do something that I don’t necessarily want to do, but I will do it anyway, even if it makes me fearful and uncomfortable. I am not sure where I will land, but I trust that it is exactly where I need to be.

Mahalo to all you lovely beings. Feel free to message and comment!

Rylee