The Spiral Path Back to the Self

And the deepest gratitude of all

After my recent post about heart-led living ( https://www.ellenlivingston.com/p/why-heart-led-living-has-gotten-me ), I received a request from a reader asking me to explore more deeply the balance of self-leadership between the heart and wisdom, even suggesting that perhaps I could interview a relevant expert or practitioner (suggestions, anyone?). I agree that it is a topic worthy of deep-diving!

I do experience the lifelong journey back home to my Self as a spiral, in the sense that my deeper awareness is revealed layer, by layer, by layer, each lived revelation bringing me gradually closer to the central anchored essence of me. And in that deep center, I imagine lives the harmonic balance of heart and wisdom, in perfection. I like the image of the spiral also because although we humans repeat patterns and sometimes feel stuck in them, we are never in an endless “loop,” because we are always evolving and becoming, and therefore repeating a pattern from at least a slightly new vantage point each time. I believe we are always traveling a spiral path home to the truth of our center, however slow or non-directional the path may sometimes appear.

I am aware of a ‘false peace’ that masquerades as a return to the Self, but is not true freedom. We are not free until we have developed the capacity to hold both storm and silence, empathy and compassion, without fear of collapse. A healed heart is fierce and alive, not fragile. It is a keeper of sacred fire, and an alchemist of emotion. Intuitively, suffering is turned into wisdom, and anger into light. The healed empath at last becomes a sovereign being, possessing the freedom to face all experience directly, without being ruled by rigid structure, protection, fear, or overwhelm.

I have learned, through trial by fire, that the emotion most suppressed by empaths is rage. This subconscious rage ultimately breaks through a false peace, and becomes the doorway to divinity - if one is willing to open that door. The caring empath feels everyone else’s feelings easily, but often cannot embrace the deepest, most unacceptable depths of their own. For me, this suppressed rage expressed first as anxiety and depression in my early 20’s, then as chronic pains in my physical body. For others, it manifests as chronic disease, or ineffectiveness in life. It is the ache of misalignment and self-abandonment, the dissonance of disconnection with the innermost Self, the exhaustion of the pretending and performance required to ‘fit in’ or succeed by conventional measures.

People fear freedom, because it requires sovereignty, which is earned through periods of conscious solitude, and the courage to engage authentically with the complexity of life and relationships. Freedom requires choosing honesty over comfort, and being responsible for a deeply internal choreography of the dance between the heart and the mind. You must learn to feel safe in your own presence, and to truly inhabit time. Life becomes a response to what is real, no longer a reaction to appearances and ego needs.

It sounds powerful, doesn’t it? To live soulfully and with bold presence, a vessel through which light flows unobstructed, unbound by arbitrary structures or fear. Yet this is where true intuition leads us on our path, informed by the emotions of the heart, and the wisdom of conscious awareness. From this alignment, we speak to share truth, not to keep illusions intact. We create genuinely, and form healthy, loving, interdependent (not codependent) bonds with others.

Alignment of heart and wisdom is the profound truth that rises from the ashes of the destruction wrought by the chaos of misalignment. This coherence is not handed to us — it is something earned through earnest, endless self-inquiry, and courageous engagement with life. It is necessary to endure the fire of solitude until you feel safe and at peace in your own presence, and it is also necessary to allow the relentless mirror of life and relationships to refine you, and show you who you are.

The deepest gratitude of all, I think, must come with the true realization of oneness, when all obstacles to this absolute awareness have at last been removed. Along my spiral path home to this sacred essence, I am grateful for all beings I encounter (kind or unkind), and all experiences (easy or hard), because all of it is the lessons I need to help me find my way….and that, I believe, is the purpose of this life.

Sun & Moon song