Melbourne, Australia. December 20th, 2009.

That’s where and when I began a month-long solitary retreat.

Something I could only name as “irresistible force” was pulling me inward and away from the outside world of my work and social calendar.

I disconnected from everyone and everything.

I disappeared from the world.

I began what was to become a profound journey of reflection, release, and renewal.

One day, my eyes closed. Shortly after, they opened, but I was no longer in my home in Melbourne; I was sitting on the banks of the Ganges river in the ancient city of Varanasi. I was at one of the several burning ghats, stone steps where hundreds of cremations occur every day, with bodies placed on wooden pyres, set alight with ghee, while priests chant sacred mantras.

There I was, in some astral form, sitting quietly, taking it in.

I could feel much sadness and regret in the smoke. I could hear soft voices, the voices of the dead.

I felt as if my subtle form was eavesdropping on theirs; hearing things perhaps meant only for their departing souls.

I heard their reflections about how they gave themselves too often to things that did not really matter—to worries and concerns, to activities and aspirations, to quarrels and squabbles. I also felt how quickly each body journeyed from birth, through the drama of life, to these burning cradles that were birthing them out of this world.

Some invisible guide asked me, “What makes life truly worth living? Look how quickly it all ends. What makes the difference between a well-lived life, and one squandered on petty things?”

What I discovered in this shamanic journey is that “the difference” we want to make is about a way of living. It is a choice between petty concerns, mindlessness, sadness, negativity, cynicism—and clarity, truth, meaning, and purpose.

I already knew that there is something written in each person’s heart, in the scripture of their soul, that is their map for an authentic life, and if they follow the paths of that map they will live a well-lived life, a significant life, without regret or sadness. They will live a full, unique, joyful, exuberant life.

But now I know it more fully, as if a brighter light has been installed in each cell of my being.

Making a difference is not something we do, but rather a lifestyle we choose, one that flows from the words inscribed in the scripture of our heart, of our soul. In this way of purposeful living we are a constant blessing to ourselves and to others; we are a walking seed and spark that awakens and fires the imagination of others towards a similar way of living.

The ways in which each of us will make a difference will flow by definition and necessity out of our inner being. First, we choose the difference between true and false, between authentic and inauthentic. Then, we act. The difference is made in our being, before the action.

It is made when we opt for inner truth.

I understood that the size and scope of what we do is not important. Our life may be huge and daring and world-shaking, or it may be small and quiet and unrecognized by the masses or media.

What matters, what makes the difference, is the fragrance we emit, the intoxicating aura we carry, as we fulfill whatever roles we are called to by the secret that only we know, the secret revealed to us when we enter the deep and beautiful sacred place of our heart to read what is written there for us.

That is what counts.

That’s how we live a well-lived life.

This is the difference every human being wants to make: to live an authentic life of deep meaning, of significance, of connection to existence itself.

When the petty preoccupations of unexamined busyness are struck down and taken apart by our deeper knowing and feeling, we become expansive and elevated as in those moments where time gives way to eternity, where self-concern gives way to a greater belonging, where things we have no words for become our constant companions and trusted friends.

The difference that we all want to make, is the difference we make through choice and devotion and love, by choosing an authentic life, the life only we can live: the choice between depth and surface, between significance and pettiness, between courage and fear, between possibility and cynicism, between clarity and doubt, between connection and alienation, between generosity and greed, between imagination and recitation, between creativity and repetition.

It is certainly a choice between freedom and bondage, between magic and mundane.

There is great magic in choosing an authentic life.

When we open our heart and unshutter our soul, we find unimagined things are suddenly possible. We uncover creative and expressive powers that are not from learning and experience, not from courses and certifications, but from our very nature. We suddenly feel that the blood pumping through us, circulates through every living thing; that’s how close, how joined, how similar we would become with everything else, with all of existence.

We awake to a world that is not fixed and certain, but one that shape-shifts to fit the contours of our map, the one drawn in our heart from the beginning of time. This world, awakened by the magic within us, becomes a story waiting to be told, about a life of dimensions and levels and nuances and subtleties of music and mystery and miracle where anything is possible, where anything can happen from any place at any time without reason or cause.

This is the difference that magic makes, and that we make with magic.

This difference comes from who we are, from consciously choosing to live from that deep place inside us, now wide open; from that secret being revealed for the first time, spoken and told with every word, made real and true with every step, every move, every act.

Then, all our doing is a blessing.

Then, when it is our turn to be turned to ashes, people who knew us would both mourn the loss and be wildly joyful that we had lived. And we, and our enduring spirit, would be very happy, because we would have chosen a well-lived life.

 

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Apprentice Editor: Kim Haas / Editor: Catherine Monkman

Photo: Eneas De Troya  via Flickr