Are these the only two things that matter?

by Lian Brook-Tyler

As we ready ourselves to set off on the inaugural Wild Sovereign Soul Pilgrimage next week, I was contemplating how these kinds of intentional and devotional group experiences are an incredible opportunity to remember to open to meet Life (with a capital L).

And by that I mean, Life as a synonym for why we’re even here, for soul, and for spirit.

I was then reminded of what people who have had Near Death Experiences report as being the only two important things about life:

1. To learn

2. To love others

(See short clip + full episode in which I go deeper into this).

I’m not going to try to convince you that’s true, though I will say it aligns pretty well with what I was shown in my brushes with Death (also a synonym for why we’re even here, for soul, and for spirit), and it sounds like a rather good enquiry to live into.

Of course, we can live this way as a practice every day… to orient towards learning and loving others.

When you realise your son is somehow booked in for the wrong operation… just five minutes before he goes in.

When your phone has logged out of your email so that you miss important messages (which you won’t discover until days later).

When your super duper high tech webcam is delighting in constantly blurring or not working at all.

When your house has been taken over by your GCSE-cramming daughter leaving a trail of neon flashcards, dog-eared past papers, pens that the “puppy” (almost two years old) will chew, Mac cables belonging to anyone but her, and mugs telling fortunes in hot chocolate granules in her wake.

And when at the end of all of that attempting to squeeze in the time to cook a nutritious meal for your family makes you late for choir practice, meaning you rush into the room to join straight in with a strange new vocal warm-up involving asking, via the medium of actions and song, “a waiter for water for your daughter so she doesn’t die of thirst” (like she isn’t already well hydrated by the endless hot chocolate), and then in your haste mixed with your lifelong confusion of left and right, realising after 10 minutes you’d been doing it back to front to the entire group the whole time.

(Eagle-eyed readers might have intuited that this wasn’t a bunch of random examples but a small taste of my day yesterday).

And yet, most of us forget, and so we tend to close to Life, as surely as ink on the carpet follows a dog chewing a Biro.

Which is why finding and creating ways to remind ourselves to open to Life, is the meta practice that can support us in this moment-to-moment practice when it’s hardest to remember.

And so what I realised this morning was that this pilgrimage will provide that to me: a twelve-week long reminder to open to Life and its constant opportunities to learn and love others.

Come join us if you’d like to remember the point of it all too.

All my love,

Lian ♥️

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