Live The Good Things You Believe

"Your life becomes what you believe it can be." - Tara C. Pray

A book I read several years ago, I recently stumbled across again. Peace Pilgrim is the story of a woman of the same name, who walked 25,000 miles from 1953-1981 across the United States in a personal pilgrimage for peace. She taught the message of how inner peace could be the catalyst for change in the world.  She lived on faith and her vow was to walk and talk to as many people possible about the message of peace, and to “remain a wanderer until mankind has learned the way of peace, walking until given shelter and fasting until given food.”

Her pilgrimage began during a time when there was heightened conflict and chaos in the United States. It was a time of unrest and major change; wars, social injustice, and poverty were some of the major ills plaguing our nation and world at the time (and even in the present day the same issues persist). Peace Pilgrim witnessed what was happening around her and felt called to do something to make a difference in the lives of people.

She took several steps to prepare for what would ultimately become her pilgrimage, but at the beginning, she did not know how her soul-stirring desire to do something would manifest itself. All she knew for sure was that she was troubled by what she saw in the world, “As I looked about the world, so much of it impoverished, I became increasingly uncomfortable about having so much while my brothers and sisters were starving. Finally, I had to find another way. The turning point came when, in desperation and out of a very deep seeking for a meaningful way of life, I walked all one night through the woods. I came to a moonlit glade and prayed. I felt a complete willingness, without any reservations, to give my life--to dedicate my life--to service. "Please use me!" I prayed to God. And a great peace came over me."

On many levels, her story is fascinating and inspiring. I was struck by one particular quote when she talked about the idea of living the good things you believe, “I got busy on a very interesting project. This was to live all the good things I believed in… It took the living quite a while to catch up with the believing, but of course, it can be done, and now if I believe something, I live it. Otherwise, it would be perfectly meaningless. As I lived up to the highest light I had, I discovered that another light was given; that I opened myself to receiving more light as I lived the light I had.”

When I first read it years ago, I was in a place where my life was not in alignment with what I believed and the changes I felt I was being called to make, but I was resistant to. My faith was weak and my fear was high and my thought life conflicted. But when I read this quote then and even now it struck me as a radical way to approach living.

What does it mean to live the good things you believe? And what does that look like in a world where we are not often taught to trust our inner voice, the inner wisdom that resides inside of each of us?

When we believe, we trust in something or someone; we give ourselves fully to the idea(s) we hold.

If you think about it, how many of us really live the good things by trusting or fully giving of ourselves to them?

Many times we may not even know what we really believe because it is all intertwined with what everyone outside of us believes; our family and friends, our partners, our co-workers, culture, and society at large. Our thoughts and beliefs not really our own.

Or maybe we don’t live the good things we really believe because it would require sacrifices and making changes that we may not think we are ready for or even want to do.

Or maybe we let fear and insecurity become the things we believe in more than the relationships, the dreams or the causes we give lip service to when we say this is what we believe in yet our actions say something different.

To get clear about what we believe for ourselves, we have to be clear about what we think in the first place. When you examine what you think and really believe, do your beliefs match with how you are living your life right now? Are your thoughts and behaviors in harmony or in conflict with what you say you believe?

What good things do you really believe about yourself, your life, your value, your gifts, your talents? What do you really believe about money, love, relationships, faith, service, social issues, and purpose?

Our thoughts guide our actions and ultimately guide what we believe. In another excerpt from Peace Pilgrim she states, "If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a defeatist or negative thought. Since we create through thought, we need to concentrate very strongly on positive thoughts. If you think you can't do something, you can't. But if you think you can, you may be surprised to discover that you can. It is important that our thoughts be constantly for the best that could happen in a situation -- for the good things we would like to see happen."

What I found inspiring about the life of Peace Pilgrim was the truth in which she lived. She was true to God and to herself. I think she was able to do this because she came to know and accept the fullness of who she was and her purpose. Peace Pilgrim was in deep connection with God and she moved through life from a place of service focused on what she could give to others and not on what she could get for herself, “My desire is to strive toward perfection; to be as much in harmony with God's will as possible; to live up to the highest light I have. I'm still not perfect, of course, but I grow daily... I am able to do everything I am called to do, and I do know what I need to know to do my part in the Divine Plan. And I do experience the happiness of living in harmony with God's will for me.”

When you know who you are, what you believe and what you stand for, there is little room for deviation. Self –betrayal has no place to reproduce itself in your life.

To live the good things you believe brings you to the essence of who you are, there is no buckling under the pressures of everyone else’s expectations; instead, you choose to be true to yourself and to the call of your life no matter the response it generates from onlookers.

To live the good things you believe requires soul searching, honesty, breaking down barriers placed by yourself and others, silence, letting go and a willingness chart a path that is uniquely yours; accompanied by a faith in God that guides you every step of the way.

What would you imagine your life to be, if the good things you really believed in were reflected in how you lived your life on a daily and consistent basis?

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I encourage you to download a FREE copy of Peace Pilgrim by clicking here.

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