Evan Sanders's Blog, page 25

As The Box Opens

Exposed.

It’s the only way to put it. Every once in a while you see things so clearly that they shake your foundation. There’s no avoiding them. Just the dead honest trust comes out and there’s no way to spin it. There’s no getting around it. You just have to face it.

I think for a long time I’ve allowed myself to meander around the deepest layers of my healing. I’ve focused on everything but that innermost layer that was standing there waiting for me to dive in. In a few instances, I’ve touched that place. I’ve seen the realities and understood what exists.

But I didn’t stay for long. I didn’t want to stay there because those places were seemingly too hot to touch. They hurt when I went there. Sometimes badly. But that was the point – working through the pain to allow myself to heal.

Like I said, I’ve done that in many ways.

But, in hindsight, it was like landscaping around the tree. Sure everything has started to look nice but I really didn’t get deep down into it.

I think it’s time for that.

When the box opens, you see life exactly as it is. You see where those unhandled situations are. You see exactly how you’ve avoided specific parts of your life and how those decisions have paved the way for where you are now.

But, most importantly, you get a clear understanding that if you choose different, you will change.

The world around you will shift and you will start to unfold on even deeper levels of healing no matter what happened in the past. There’s not finish line here…just unfolding.

I believe that I have only started to scratch the surface.

Part of me was a bit scared of committing to something that would yield so many growing pains. But the other part of me was certain that spending this time really digging in deep was going to be exactly what I needed to make my steps into the next place.

What does that mean?

Going back.

Going back and transforming my story.

While I have written down a lot of it, there’s still much more to be explored. I have to dive in. That part of this path has to begin now. I have to wander back deep within the caves and illuminate everything that I’ve been holding onto for sometime now.

Lamp in hand.

Courage in the heart.

Let’s begin.

-Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project

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Warpath

Focus.

Focus.

Quiet down.

Ride the breath.

Feel the pockets of air rise from the bottom of your depths. Connect. Understand. Be.

There is nothing outside of you. It is within you.

There is nothing to seek outside of yourself. You already are. 

Your path for all this time was to begin to understand that seeking anywhere will never deliver you to where you need to be. It’s not out there. It’s here. It’s always been here.

The moment you slowed down the stars welcomed you back home. The moment you sat you discovered that the truth was always here. All you had to do was plug in.

You thought the chord was kicked out of the wall for such a long time and you spent so much of it running around trying to find an outlet. No matter how hard you tried you could never find one.

There is no outlet. There is no chord.

There’s just you…and you are it.

You are everything…and everything is you.

I’m breathing new life into me again. My hands gripped the steering wheel late at night while I drove underneath the glimmering bed of the heavens. There I was, speaking. Proclaiming to myself. Discussing what I had done and who I had been. Seeing. Seeing the path that had been traveled. Understanding. Understanding that in that moment traversing the pavement that I would forever change the path I was on.

I could see the battle within myself.

Part of me for such a long time didn’t want to let go. The other side of me, the deeper side, knew far better. It was asking me to give up the gift I had been given to receive an even grander one. It asked for full faith. Not 90%. All of it. Every last drop of who I am and what I had been.

It asked me to turn myself in to receive something more. To get down on my knees and pass off the first chunk of my life to something that understands far greater than I ever could. To let go of fear. To let go of everything as the way it once was and to allow myself to settle into everything that will be.

Transitions.

Transitions into new places that will evoke the depths of my soul and set me loose with an unconquerable spirit. The warpath. Plowing and paving through the untouched lands to show the way for others. No more standing at a the fringes. There was only through. There’s always only been through. 

So it’s time.

As I laid there in silence I saw myself get up out of my old way and walk ahead. What did I leave behind? A story. One that served me well.

And a flower…

Growing from my chest.

-Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project

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What You Know…

Quiet down.

Can you hear the whispers?

Can you hear the silent tidings of your heart speaking to you of what you already know?

Can you silence your mind enough to hear them?

Trust them?

Answer to them?

Become them?

Because this is what you already know. It’s not the depths of your soul that has ever guided you in the wrong direction. It has been your mind. Scheming, separating, dividing, conquering, judging…all from a spec of sand called “experience.”

But when you really begin to think about your experience, you end up realizing that in comparison to all of the things that could have happened – an infinite amount – that this life you’ve lived is so limited in comparison to everything that could be or ever could have been.

It’s that grain of sand on an infinite beach.

So quiet down.

Listen.

Connect to what you already know.

Connect to who you truly are.

Ground yourself and root deep within the earth when you are seeking answers. The answers are not beyond you. The answers come when you truly show up here. When you sit. When you ground. When you’re in this moment.

My answers have come when I needed them the most.

As I’ve sat here, clearing my mind, cleaning my body out, letting go of the old and making space for the new I have settled more and more into what I truly know deep down inside. It’s never been about adding on in my life…it’s always been about taking away. Taking away what was keeping me from already knowing what I knew.

It was about beginning to make my mind work for me and not against me. It was learning how to work with my emotions instead of letting them tear me down.

But not of that was tacked on. All of that was learning how to take away. The only place I could truly learn how to do that was away from everything else and in silence. The only way I could come into direct contact with my health, my stories, my mind, my wisdom, my loneliness…was in the quiet.

No distractions.

No stories of what I should or shouldn’t be doing.

Just me…guiding my own ship and letting this heart take me where I needed to go.

And there’s that current underneath it all. That unexplainable guidance that comes when you finally take your oars out of the water and let the endless depths take you to where you’re truly meant to go.

I think I spent a lot of time in my own way rowing towards this place where I wanted things to all turn out. But all of that rowing didn’t take me to where I really needed to go. Something in my soul kept me in the right vicinity…but here I am now letting go of the old ways and allowing myself to turn into something else.

A metamorphasis.

Piece of me have resisted.

Pieces of me have cried out NO!

But those are not parts of me that are rooted in love. Those are the last little bits of fear. Those are the stories that have to go, some having been around for almost 10 years now, to make space for them to be filled with all sorts of new energy.

It’s easy to look back on your life and wish that the person you are today could go into those moments and do them differently. Even here as I am writing I had a flash of that just hit me.

But wisdom speaks highly of all that it took to get to where I am now.

So you wouldn’t want to do it differently.

You have to walk the path and keep looking forward. From time to time it’s great to go back and see all that you have done and gone through. But you have to turn back around eventually.

You have to keep walking.

Keep creating.

Keep loving.

-Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project

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What You Seek…

Rumi once said, “What you seek is seeking you.”

I think it takes courage to ask.

It takes courage to look deep within your heart and allow yourself to dream without rules or restrictions. You have to put aside all of the fear, doubt and worry. You have to let go of all of the things that other people have said to you in the past.

It takes courage to root yourself deep within the earth and ask. You close your eyes and begin speaking to the heavens. You let the gifts that are within you heat up and images of possibility start to dance in your mind.

It takes courage to be who you really are, to pull off the mask, and to let the world see the most authentic version of yourself.

All of that takes guts.

Will there be fear? Of course.

But that journey of allowing yourself to dive into who you really are is the greatest one of all.

For too long you have stuffed your gifts down into the depths hiding them away for no one to see. Maybe many have spoken disbelief into your heart long ago…but somewhere, deep down, those dreams still burn.

They wake you up late at night knocking at the door of your faith.

They tug at your heart waiting for you to just let go of control and open the gates for them to come out and play.

The worst thing of all would be to close them off to the world forever and to let them die. They would haunt you right until the end. They would cry at their fate.

I’ve always believed that dreams are things that come to you because you are fated to make them happen. Those sparks within your soul are your guides to your destiny. I’ve read stories about the great thinkers and inventors of the past creating worlds that no one even could have even imagined.

They believed…and then created the unthinkable.

When I look at my life and see the paths I have taken and the one that I am on currently, there’s a great calling for more courage. Courage to do what I have never done before and move into the world in a way that would help me grow and expand beyond what I am now.

There’s a calling in my heart to let go of the old and to allow myself to gently move into the new.

Those old stories have held onto me for quite some time and have been hard to disintegrate. There’s a lot of fear centered around letting go and what would happen if I did. In many ways, I understand this fear. I see that it came from a place long ago that helped me survive. I understand that I had to show up in that way to keep myself alive.

But now, all these years later, there’s only a lingering fear that’s keeping those stories going and there’s no sense or purpose to them.

There’s only the request to let go. 

There’s a whisper of more to come when I finally do.

This journey at times has shaken me down to my soul. It has challenged every possible piece of me and who I am. It has shaped me, broken me, molded me, and forged me into the person I am today.

For that, I can be thankful.

The decision to embark has been the greatest decision of my life.

But the journeys in front of me are even grander. They promise many greater things than I have ever experienced and the only price I have to pay for admission is…letting go.

Release.

Drop.

Softly…drift away.

That, I’ll have to do.

-Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project

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Hold The Line

It’s easy to quit.

But it takes everything to hold the line.

It takes everything to stand up to all of the demons that come out to play once you decide to take on a new path. Wolves circle you waiting for you to succumb to the biting touch of self-doubt and will jump on you in your greatest moment of weakness.

But you have to stay strong.

You have to hold the line.

When the odds are stacked up against you and there’s no one that believes in what you are doing but you, that’s when you have to dig into your faith the most. That’s when you have to remind yourself of what you believe in and why you are doing what you are doing.

No one can travel this path for you.

But many will give you opinions and feed doubt into your heart despite your best intentions. It’s never really about you anyways. It’s about them. It’s their fear speaking. It’s their sense of possibility coming out to play.

Often you will hear those whispers as you are traveling down a path they couldn’t achieve.

Silence the outside voices.

Silence The Judge speaking fear into your heart.

Soften. Trust. Endure.

Hold the line.

Hold the line.

I have been challenged in many ways lately. The greatest of which has been continuing to believe that my heart’s meandering about and thirst for adventure is justified. It has been in looking back since the years I left school and continuing to have faith that this path I have been on, as unconventional as it may have been, is true and good.

Those challenges have stacked up many times and yet I know deep deep down, somewhere inside, that this has all been out of heart and that has been the singular point that has made all the difference.

I could have quiet a long time ago.

I could have abandoned this project time and time again citing evidence that The Wolves would have loved to consume.

I could have done a lot of things differently that would have set me down many stranger paths. But I didn’t. I chose this way, and no matter what has arrived, I’ve been able to maintain my faith in its ways.

At times it feels like I am walking blindly through life. Maybe that’s my head speaking. While all of that is true, I feel more guided than ever by holding a sense of faith in my heart.

Faith that this is no accident and that there’s truly something for me here.

Faith that I am capable of answering these calls.

That’s worth it to me.

So wild heart, set me ablaze so I can bloom.

-Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project 

 

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Into The Desert Sands

Footsteps.

Footsteps into a new place. A place I’ve never been before. These are the desert sands. These are the shifting dunes that speak to my soul.

Unknowns.

Whispers.

Solitude.

Silence.

I hear them welcoming me to something I’ve been called to do for such a long time. Quiet down. Seek and discover. Knock and open. Ask and receive.

These past few days have been littered with realizations about my life that have only come at the hands of making big changes. The clarity that has arrived has connected dots that only just short time ago seemed scattered and lost.

I still have questions.

I have questions of which path to take as they come closer and closer to me as I walk through this next 40 days. But I’m going to leave those questions off to the side while I step into this fast. I’m going to allow the answers to arrive when they need to. No pushing. No pulling.

I know, when the time is right, they come to the surface as a bubble climbs its way upward from the depths of the ocean.

You can’t rush that.

You can only let it be.

I don’t feel alone anymore. I feel more connected. I feel this deep underlying sense of love that has always been there and will always be there. I plugged myself into something deeper that I suspiciously avoided for so long.

I think that’s the way it has always been meant to happen. The denial of the call and then finally answering the phone that just keeps ringing and ringing no matter what you do. You can try to avoid what you know deep down inside but the truth always stands. It always shines as a beacon of light despite your best attempts to dwell in the dark.

It’s easier to just step in.

Sure, you may not know where you are for a time. That feeling of being lost might arrive at moments. But that’s the point. You’re beyond where you once were. You’re past what you’ve experienced before. You’re growing, and with that, comes all of the greatness involved with adventures.

I’ve never done this before.

I’ve never gone on a long fast.

I’ve never had the discipline to spend such a long time allowing my body to heal and to regenerate. Until now.

I have no idea what to expect.

I have no idea what’s going to happen with my body, my emotions, my thoughts, my spirituality. I’m running on faith and with guidance from a very spiritual healer I am in contact with.

For me, that’s enough – the faith more than anything.

For me, I know that answering those deeper callings always leads to something great. I trust that. I know that I can do this. I also know, that in some way shape or form, this will drastically change the course of my life.

Here’s to finding out what that is.

-Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project

 

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1

Many years ago I told my best friend that I felt that I needed to somehow find my way up to the mountains for a few months to just sit with myself and melt into the silence.

That silence, the thing that used to scare me the most, became my greatest teacher.

From all of the quiet, I finally heard the deeper layers of myself whisper that had been hiding behind hardened walls speak their truth again.

They echoed what the others had throughout time – adventure, passion, expansion.

But these, they spoke of something far deeper.

Love.

Not just any type of love. The type of love that only the one can give. The type of love that runs through your heart when you finally stop seeking and you see that everything you’ve needed is already here.

Here…in on way or another.

Maybe it has always been here? Maybe you were so blinded by looking at everything else that you couldn’t see what had been there all along.

For a very long time, I’ve felt that there’s been a piece of glass in front of me. While that glass was getting cleaner and cleaner, there was still this boundary that existed.

I see that this boundary was pain.

You can see through that pain when you start diving deeper and deeper into yourself, but there’s still something solid there.

Something keeping you protected from these things that you believe you fear.

For me, that was getting hurt again in ways that I’ve been hurt in the past. That was me developing myself like crazy and yet refusing to let go of the wall that was protecting me from others.

I see that now.

I see that my greatest moment of growth has been in starting the process of letting go of the story, the sword, the shield and the armor.

It’s in softening.

It’s in loosening my grip on the past.

But even more, and here’s where the whispers spoke much wisdom, it’s in going back one more time, reading through it all, and finding those pieces of wisdom I have lost touch with all those years ago.

At times, here in the mountains, there has been a great deal of confusion.

I slowly but surely let go of stories.

I let go of people.

I let go of things that were no longer for me.

But I suffered in the letting go of those things. There were old pieces of me that rebelled against these intentions and at times I succumbed to them.

I learned.

I committed again and again.

I came back to what I knew I had to do.

Maybe somewhere down the line it will get easier as I take on these big tasks. Maybe I will be able to not struggle as much as I let go more and more and clear the way for what is meant for me.

I guess I will see?

What I do know is that there is no greater journey to be taken than looking deep within your heart and answering to your purest callings.

The landscape of your soul serves as a great playground and at times a field of challenges. That’s how it’s designed to be.

If you have the courage to face The Shadow and illuminate it with The Light then everything begins to change.

-Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project

 

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I Gave My Soul To The Wind

There are these moments in our lives that forever change us.

That make an impact so deeply upon our hearts that parts of us are awoken that haven’t felt the flames of change in much time.

These are moments we will never forget nor turn back from.

These are moments that change our lives if we refuse to step back into fear.

If we allow ourselves to step into what is moving us, old ways turn to dust and new stories are born. That’s how every great adventure begins – with a decision.

A decision to allow for the gifts to come in and change you at will.

But that takes faith.

Relentless amounts of faith.

I struggled with that for a long time. I would say it was questionable amounts of faith at best. But something deep inside me knew that if I believed then my world would change. That somewhere along the line I would run into something that would feel different than anything else.

We never know when.

We never know how it’s going to happen.

We never who is going to be there.

But something about being at the beginning of a path tells us that the end holds promises for us that are beyond our wildest dreams.

Logically, your mind can understand that what you don’t see now is going to be very different. But there’s something about the beauty of the heart telling you that much more than the mind could ever see lies there waiting for you to just let go and move forward.

Letting go challenged me my entire life.

But through the years and years of holding the intention of continuing to try, I’ve become much more capable than I once was. I can hear parts of my soul whispering for me to let things in the past go, so with some reluctance, I have.

Some I let go far quicker than others.

But in the end, those whispers stay there no matter what until the job is done.

Let the wind take you.

Let your heart guide you.

You never know where you’re going to end up once you finally listen to what you know is right.

Don’t let fear, doubt and worry control you. They feed you lies that will only stop you from becoming everything you were meant to be.

I’m listening.

I’m being moved in ways I’ve never experienced.

I’m here.

I’m ready.

-Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project

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If The Path Has Heart, Take It

There are moments that each of us are faced with a decision that will change our lives.

It’s easy to get lost in details and opinions about what you are supposed to do. It’s easy to let all of the noise from the outside world push or pull you in a direction that seems reasonable.

But your heart may say something completely different.

Your heart may speak words of adventure and love.

Your heart may speak of making another effort no matter what the perception may be.

That’s a voice that you can only hear. You can only begin to understand the decisions you’ve made in the past when you quiet the world down around you enough to be able to finally listen.

Stillness will speak volumes to you.

It will give you the ability to settle down, to end the race, and to finally show up willing to connect.

But you have to give yourself that gift. If you don’t take that time and space, you will forever be tuning into stations seeking an answer that your soul already has.

My path has been nothing but crooked throughout the years.

I have rising and fallen only to rise again time and time again. It has turned left and right, sometimes straight backwards and short forward beyond where I had ever imagined.

People have come and gone. I have changed. My body has changed. My heart walls have started to come down and I have warmed up to the gifts of life.

But it hasn’t always been that way.

In fact, for a great deal of time it was a very different story.

And yet, all of that has led me to this moment right here where I’m going to give to you the best piece of advice I have ever heard in my entire life.

Does this path have heart? If so, it is good. If it doesn’t, it’s of no use. 

When I stand looking at the paths in front of me, I realize that one has a lot more heart in it. But how do I know that?

Because one scares me.

One of these paths scares me because I know how much I will grow, be challenged, step beyond my comfort zones and move straight into the forest of the unknown.

While fear is there, that means I have the opportunity to be courageous.

I can dig into my faith and know that the direction I am being pointed in is something that will help me follow my destiny rather than destroy me. I do not have to let fear make the final decision in my life but rather use that as an indicator that I am heading in the right direction.

Every time I have turned into my fears rather than stepped away from them my life has changed.

I became something more.

Or, maybe I just stepped into who I’ve always meant to be.

How do I want this story to be written?

Do I want it to be one full of adventure, love and passion? Or do I want to be sitting in a pool of regret when I’m older wishing that I had the courage when I was young to take the chances that were right in front of me?

I know now that I want all of this to be one wild adventure.

I know now after having made decisions out of fear that I have to put my heart on the line and really go for it.

It doesn’t matter what the rest of the world thinks of these decisions. There is only that quiet whisper in my heart begging me to go.

To try again.

To follow this path with relentless amounts of faith.

Will I be test?

Yes of course.

But will I become who I’ve always meant to be?

Yes.

That will only come with courage…

And moving through fear no matter what.

-Evan Sanders

 

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You Have To Protect Your Dream

No matter what, you have to protect your dream.

It’s inevitable…life is going to throw all sorts of things at you and test you in ways that will challenge you down to your core. But you can’t quit. This is your dream, and under no circumstance can you allow for anyone to take if from you, muddy it, cause you to doubt it, abandon it, or destroy it. It’s a gift from the heavens and demands your blood, sweat and tears. But more than that, it calls for your commitment.

Life’s been testing me lately.

The storm has been gaining strength and I’ve had to do everything to dig in and just stay planted. Unexpected circumstances, changes and tests have reawaken that side of me that loves to get into the dirt when things get hard.

You either allow yourself to rise to the occasion or fall to pieces.

But that’s your choice. That choice is made in the way that you view what is happening in front of you. If you see it as your demise and everything is falling apart, that is certainly what you will get. If you see it as your greatest opportunity to rise and become more…you will step up in ways that are good and healthy for you because of the pressure.

There have been many times that I have told myself that I refuse to allow myself to complain, wine, mope and feel bad for what’s happening. I refuse it. No. I will not do that under any circumstance. Instead, I will regroup and head straight forward with my new plan.

Because if you keep holding onto the old plan, you’re going to be stuck there forever. But if you step up and create a new plan with what you have instead of focusing on what you don’t have, you become a very very different version of yourself.

So I’m generating a new plan, not wasting any time whatsoever, and moving forward relentlessly.

Drop all of the questions of “why?” as well. Forget the why is this happening, why me, and all other questions associated with why. That can land you in a mental prison as well. Because the longer and longer you stick around asking those questions the less and less you are actually spending time really doing something about your situation.

So for me, I know that I have to spend 0 time in that area and just stand in what’s possible. What are my options? How can I make this work for me? How can I move ahead and not miss a beat?

I’m making a choice.

A conscious choice.

One that involves me stepping into the best version of myself and refusing to sink down into misery. I’m going to make this work for me. I’m going to rise to the challenge.

-Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project

 

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