Learning to receive with grace and ease involves many elements, as I mentioned last week. Another critical skill is being able to keep moving forward when we don’t know the way. If we’re alert, we can see the next step, but typically we can’t see very far down the road, no matter how hard we look.
You may recall Jack Canfield’s comments about this in the movie The Secret. He advised us to think about the headlights on our car. We drive at night, sometimes only able to see 200 feet ahead of us. We just keep going forward, with small sections of our path becoming clear as we progress. In the 2012 Summer Olympics you may have heard a similar story told about Olympian Michael Phelps’ experience in the 2008 games where his goggles flooded during the first lap of one race. Soon he was unable to see anything! Being a champion, he continued to swim, counting his strokes all the way to a medal.
The lessons here are threefold: keep moving, use what you know, and have faith. It’s appropriate to stop and wait for guidance, provided we don’t get stuck. If fear is what keeps you from moving, it’s probably time to get going again. Remember what you know; for Phelps, it was how many strokes he took in one lap. We almost always know more than we realize. Finally, have faith that the way will be made clear. You really can get there from here.