What lights me up – reflections from a train ride

What lights me up? – as I began thinking about this prompt from Stacey Hoffer from the Wisdom Bloggers Sisterhood, I first came up with the obvious but also very important answers:

What lights me up or what really makes me feel alive is when I listen to my heart and soul and I am able to take inspired action steps based on what my heart and soul guides me to do.

Then I realize that while it sounds nice, it’s not so simple as that. For example, as I am writing this, I would love to be in a quiet place in nature or at home with a view out to our garden and the animals there, but as it happens, I’m sitting on a train, and that time on the train is pretty much all the time I have for writing today. So in the following I’ll share my reflections from that train ride on what what lights me up or makes me feel alive.

I begin by becoming fully present where I am. Can I surrender to the present moment? What does that mean, anyway? It’s not about ‘Doing’ and struggling – it’s simply allowing myself to become present here where I am – in the place I’m in, and in the body I inhabit, so to speak. It is letting go of resistance. Letting go of my need for things to be a certain way and accept what is.

Is that a passive attitude? Not necessarily. It doesn’t mean I can’t walk away from a situation if I want or choose to. But if I resist the situation I’m in, my ‘choice’ will be and feel more of an escape or running away from something. But if I allow myself to first be fully in the moment – be fully present where I am – then my choice is a positive, constructive, inspired one.

I’ve found that vigilance and constant awareness is needed, for it’s so easy to slip into resistance; to fall into the role of victim where it feels like the world around you is running your life. When we reach that state or adopt that attitude, we tend to stay there.


The empowered state or attitude, as I see it, is to say: OK, I’m here now, so I choose to Be here fully and make the best of it while setting the intention to be guided by my soul, my heart or my intuition about my obvious next step that will bring me further on my path to living a soulful, joyful life that allows me to Be me, and to express my soul and my light.

As with all things in life, it’s a balance, and I have found that what makes me feel alive; what lights me up, is that if I can allow myself to really be present in each moment, with whatever that moment contains, I can more easily let go of worry, fear etc. and move into a state of peace that grows as I keep returning to the practice.

That’s a way of meeting the many challenging situations that life invariably presents us with.

At the same time, I have a continuous practice of listening to my heart, to listen for what my soul, my intuition guides me to do. That brings joy, inspired action, and creative expression I didn’t know I had in me.

And then there are times when my soul guides me to do something, but the outer world needs me to be or do something else; that’s when the first practice of surrendering to and acceptance of the present moment comes in.

In this game of life, the practice of gratitude is a key practice. The more I practice gratitude, the more I realize how important and powerful it is.

On this path through life, everything and everyone I meet is my teacher, and I am grateful for the support I meet and for the challenges that help me grow and not take things personally. I’m especially grateful for my animal and spirit guides, who help me see the big picture; who help me move into and live from the heart and to embrace my true self – the me who is infinite, who is Compassion, and who is not separate from but connected to all that is.

With gratitude,
Marianne Soucy


Learn more about Stacey Hoffer