The Scenic Route Your Soul Seeks
An Excerpt from Uncharted – The Scenic Route Your Soul Seeks
They call me the Motorcycle Mystic because I am an intuitive counselor and I love to ride my Harley—an unusual combination, I know. But for me, riding a motorcycle is a personal symbol of spiritual fitness and living free and a way to stay fully present in the moment. My husband, Marc, and I take the back roads—the scenic routes—and enjoy the view and the ride. Sometimes we stick with the more familiar and boring route because it’s faster and we have a lot we want to do, but we recognize that even if you are feeling pressed for time and you take a “wrong” turn onto the “wrong” road, it’s all good. You’re just on the “scenic route.” There’s always something to discover, always something of beauty. The best thing to do when you find yourself here is to take a deep breath, keep your eyes open, and stay in the present instead of worrying about what might happen in the future if you don’t get back on track right away. Your intuition will guide you to what to do next.
Riding a motorcycle requires you to be completely in a zone of present time awareness. Motorcycling is a dangerous sport, and you need to be calmly alert and aware of everything around you at all times. It’s an amazing feeling to be so present minded. Whenever you take an unexpected detour and find yourself on the scenic route in your own life, you can get frustrated and give yourself a facepalm, or you can stay fully present while you tune in to what this road has to offer and what your options are. Sometimes the unexpected journey turns out to be even more delightful than the original route would have been. Taking the scenic route isn’t always efficient—but where do you want to go, anyway? Seriously, maybe you were on the wrong road!
Many of us get stuck thinking we have to do this or that in order to be happy. But the soul yearns for experiences. Maybe those particular experiences can’t be found if you are rushing through life, taking the roads clearly marked on the map that is familiar to you.
If you are feeling stuck, think about this: What if you were to make choices from the truest part of you and choose a path that takes you to uncharted places? What would your life be like then? Would the back roads be unwanted and uncomfortable detours, or would they be magical, uncharted places of discovery?
When you find the courage to listen to your intuition, step off the familiar path, and explore the unknown, you will be following the calling of your soul. That’s what you are here for. You will get to where you were supposed to go—which you decided upon long before you came into this life. Your destination is not a place but an experience, and there are many ways to have that experience.
Over the course of a lifetime, you may find yourself feeling lost again and again, but your soul is always right there next to you, waiting for you to wake up and pay attention to what it has to tell you. Trust it!
When you co-create with Spirit wholeheartedly, mindfully, and respectfully—in community with others— you are doing what you came here to do. Who knows who you will meet on the back roads? Who knows what you will discover? It may be an opportunity to grow, to help someone heal, or to inspire someone who is feeling hopeless and weighed down with despair. You might happen an unexpected amusement that you would never have encountered otherwise, or an experience that makes you laugh from deep within your being. Maybe, just maybe, when you are on that scenic route you will be struck with awe by the sight of a great blue heron taking off toward the clouds, or a red-tailed fox that lingers long enough for you to gaze into its eyes and feel at one with its spirit. Magic can happen when you’re not hurrying toward some destination you think is the place to be, right now, regardless of what’s currently in front of you or around you.
Connect with Spirit, open to what you and Spirit might co-create together, and you will be on the right road even if it seems you are taking the long way and wasting time. Why not take the scenic route rather than the highway? Why the hurry?
Get rid of the mentality that you are going “to” some specific place on the map—trying to create some specific situation that will allow you to be happy ever after. Life will always change, and you will always be in motion. Happiness comes and goes, and rise up within you at any moment if you simply utter the magic words “thank you.” Gratitude, awe, and joy are yours when you take that pause to feel the beauty all around you.
So the scenic route is a back road—not the most direct, fastest way to what you think you want to experience. Guess what? You can experience joy, abundance—whatever you seek—on whatever road you are on.
And your soul may want something more than what your conscious mind is seeking. Your soul craves the experience of opening your heart and your eyes in compassion. You may have to take a back road for that opening to happen. Face it: You probably don’t have “develop a deeper understanding of people who frustrate me” and “experience the bittersweetness of life” on the list of goals your ego or small self wants to accomplish. Your soul takes winding paths to get the experiences it wants to have. It is working with Spirit to co-create a reality your small self might appreciate until it awakens out of its spiritual amnesia and remembers your soul’s purpose: to be present, alive, and joyful as you co-create a better reality for yourself, and for those around you.
So when you suddenly find yourself on the scenic route, don’t get upset. Observe what is around you, and how you feel in this place you arrived at unexpectedly. Be present, and you might realize you are exactly where you need to be right now to have the experiences that will satisfy the longings of your deepest self—your soul, whose idea of where you are going and how you ought to get there is a marvelous mystery for you to discover.
