Question The Easy Path Laid Out In Front Of You

Last week I went through a guided meditation session that inspired a really interesting awareness of myself that I thought might apply to you.

In the mediation I was instructed to visualize myself crossing a golden bridge, where on the other side of the bridge were two paths. In my mind’s eye I visualized them - The first one was straight in front of me, flat, wide, well kept, and you could see a good distance in front of you. The second one took a sharp turn to the right and appeared to be more rugged, less maintained, and you had little vision beyond the turn.

In my visualization I without a second thought took the safe, popular path right in front of me and started walking down it. I don’t know if there was a prompt in the meditation or if it came from my own internal dialogue, but I gave myself a pause to consider what happened. I didn’t make a conscious decision about which path I wanted to take, I just moved forward with the path outlined in front of me.

In my meditation I chose to reroute myself, walk back to the fork in the road, and instead go down the sharp turning path. Immediately it descended intensely down the canyon that the bridge just crossed. I reached the bottom in an instant and saw a steep, treacherous incline in front of me. I started to regret my decision then almost magically I bounded up the face of this cliff in a supernatural way I’d never experienced before.

Of course this is all imaginary so I can only interpret the significance of all of it, but I think there are some interesting insights.

First is we all that path that is laid out in front of us. It’s easy, safe, and expected. It’s taking the job that seemed to fall into your lap, staying in your hometown, and otherwise conforming to the expectations of others. Now there’s nothing wrong with this kind of life, there’s a lot of richness in simplicity, but is this something you chose?

In this visualization I realized that I’m more susceptible to taking the easy path than I’d like to be, and would prefer to be more curious and exploratory of my options to make a decision. I want to choose my path forward rather than just inherit what seems to be in front of me. Also I came to understand that the riskier path very well may lead to the bottom, and make things harder than they need to be. But you never know what the environment might inspire within you, like a superpower you didn’t know you had, to help you elevate to heights you didn’t believe you were capable of.

Again, there’s no judgment about what path you take. If you know that you enjoy the ease and simplicity of a traditional life, you’ll achieve that by pursuing the traditional path. But if you want to do something novel, ambitious, pioneering, and boundary stretching, you’ll need to take a different path.

It’s experiences like this that make me really excited about my personal development journey. In becoming more aware of my beliefs and unconscious patterns, I can find new ways to create the new and improved life of my choosing. Hopefully this inspires you to chase the same too.