September 6

There is a difference between understanding something and knowing it through experience.

Books have been some of my most reliable companions. They have offered tools, understanding, perspective, support, wisdom, and words for things I didn’t yet know how to name. At times, I have read something long before I was able to comprehend its depth.

I am grateful for all of it.

And I have learned that I can understand something intellectually without yet knowing it in my body.

I can read about self-worth and still abandon myself.

I can study boundaries and still struggle to set one.

I can understand that feelings need to be felt while continuing to think my way around them.

I can learn about self-compassion and still criticize myself when I am hurting.

I can read about trust and still try to control what happens next.

There is value in understanding. Sometimes an idea enters my awareness long before I am ready to live it. The words plant something. They give me language. They offer another possibility.

But eventually, life gives the wisdom somewhere to land.

I have to live it.

I have to step into the work. Feel what is happening in my body. Become curious about what is underneath it. Meet the emotions and beliefs that have been living there. Practice something different. Take the action. Set the boundary. Speak the truth. Allow myself to rest. Ask for help. Do something I have never had to do alone before.

This is where understanding begins to become embodied.

There is a difference between thinking I can trust myself and having an experience in which I am uncertain or afraid and discovering that I can remain with myself through it.

There is a difference between reading be present and discovering why sometimes today is the only amount of life I can bear to hold.

There is a difference between knowing that life is precious and looking back at a moment I talked myself out of experiencing and realizing, That would have been worth it.

Life teaches too.

Sometimes gently. Sometimes painfully. Sometimes through the very ordinary moments in which I discover that I am more capable than I knew.

I can learn, study, read, listen, and seek wise teachers while allowing life itself to be one of my greatest teachers.

Living it does not mean perfectly applying everything I have learned. Sometimes living it means noticing afterward. I wish I had done that differently.

That is experience too.

With awareness, compassion, and forgiveness, even regret can offer wisdom for the next choice. I don’t have to punish myself for what I did or didn’t do in order to learn from it.

I can let the experience change me.

The same is true of my feelings.

Self-trust does not mean believing every thought, feeling, or story that moves through me. Fear can feel like danger. Familiarity can feel like safety. An old belief can feel like truth simply because I have carried it for a long time.

Self-trust means I trust myself enough to listen.

I can notice what I feel and what my body is telling me. I can become curious about the beliefs and stories attached to it. I can ask for guidance. I can discern. And then I can take the action that feels aligned with what I know now.

Sometimes I will get it wrong.

I am still worthy of my own trust.

I can receive new information and choose again.

And perhaps that is one of the ways trust grows; not because I become certain about everything, but because I accumulate lived experiences of remaining with myself.

There will always be things I cannot know in advance.

I don’t know exactly what tomorrow will ask of me. I don’t know how everything I desire will come together. I don’t know how I will feel years from now, and I don’t need to travel there today to find out.

I can meet the life that is here.

I can create with what I have now while still dreaming of something more.

I can pay attention when life invites me to step outside and look up.

I can learn from the times I don’t.

I can keep practicing.

Books can show me a doorway.
Teachers can point toward it.
God can guide me.
And life invites me into the experience.

And all the while, I am writing a book of my own.

The one being written through the life I am living. Its pages hold what I have learned and what I have had to discover for myself. What I tried. What didn’t work. What I survived. What I chose differently. What my body taught me. What love taught me. What loss taught me. What I am still learning.

Some pages are given to me. Others are mine to write.

And all of them become part of the book from which I am learning how to live.

I can read the wisdom of others without asking their words to become the final authority on my life. My lived experience gets a voice too.

What I learn and what I live continue to inform one another. Sometimes a book gives me language for something I already know. Sometimes an experience brings meaning to words I read years ago. Sometimes my own life asks me to question something I once believed.

This too is self-trust.

I remain a student, and I am also becoming an author.

Somewhere along the way, understanding becomes something deeper.

I know.

Grounding Questions

1. What is something I once understood intellectually that I now know through lived experience?

2. Where is life giving me an opportunity to practice something I have been learning?

3. Is there something I am being invited to experience rather than only think about?

4. What might be worth stepping toward today?

Luma Dawn Healing