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You have an inner wilderness that holds something very precious – the identity of your true self.
If you want to get to know yourself, your REAL inner self, you have to leave what is familiar and venture into unknown territory. You have to explore your own inner wilderness.
How are you going to survive this inner wilderness?
The first thing you may want to do is to call for help from an inner character. The best inner character to turn is to the wild spirit within you who is willing to take risks and explore new territory.
Calling up this inner character is actually quite easy. You can sit quietly and go into a meditative state. Imagine walking into an inner landscape that is wild. This wilderness can be a forest, a jungle, a desert, a mountainous terrain. Just trust the wilderness that comes up for you.
Then call out to your wild spirit to show itself. See what image comes to you. Let your imagination pick whatever image of a wild spirit wants to manifest. Then play and explore with this figure. Ask it to show you how to be wild. Ask it to show you how to survive in the wilderness. See what lessons this wild spirit has to teach you.
This wild spirit is the pioneer in you who enjoys the challenge of investigating and searching for your true self. It enjoys exploring new inner territory. It knows how to preserve a wildness of being, unafraid of what other people say. It is not easily thwarted from your goal and will take you into unknown territory no matter how much fear you have.
Once you psychologically leave the village, it is the wild spirit who can lead the way into new territory. Only in the wilderness can this wild energy be found – when you are truly alone and finally listening to your own voice. This wild spirit is the pathfinder, hacking its way through the thick foliage of your wilderness to make contact with your true self.
When you step out into your inner wilderness, with only the Wild Spirit by your side, one of the first things you may encounter is your fierce resistance to change.
Whenever you enter therapy or put yourself under strict spiritual discipline and meditate for any length of time – day after day or intensively on retreat – you will confront the parts of yourself that are either afraid to grow up or unwilling to develop.
These are the parts of you that tempt you with every trick in the book, trying to convince you that you should run back home to the village and resume the quiet life you lived before all this wilderness nonsense began.
If you are going to survive the wilderness, you must recognize your desires to return to the village where you feel safe, and experience how strong the pull is to go backwards in your development and fall back to sleep.
Get to know your inner wild character and ask for their help. They will help you to feel free, liberated and more open to the adventure of life.
