Neuropath: The traditional definition of a neuropath is an individual subject to nervous disorders or to neuroses. However, I want to put forward an alternative definition. My definition of a neuropath is an individual who feels their way forward through life instead of trying to figure it all out.

Conjecture and Trajectory

Each decision we make sets us on a path. Whether we have or think we have a path that we are on in life, even the smallest decisions and actions can affect our trajectory.

There are a number of ways to decide to move forward in a certain direction. One is to study the past or people from the past and choose a path based on this non-current information.

Another is to discuss with others whether a friend, colleague, mentor or coach. They may be able to provide you with information often biased by their own life experiences.

Advice

Advice literally means to ‘add vision’. However that vision is through another person’s eyes and mind. Not your own. What worked for them may not necessarily work for you.

Conjecture

Often what is lacking in our decisions is to have all the knowledge necessary to make the best decision. Conjecture is an opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information. It literally means to ‘throw together’. This throwing together is what sets us on a trajectory, ‘throwing us across’ time and space on our new path.

The Neuropath

Lately I have been feeling that I am at a cross roads and unable to make clear decisions. The more I think of a new direction the more confused and uncertain I feel. Clearly thinking isn’t working for me.

So am I to be eternally in a state of cerebral limbo, or is there another way?

A few days ago I went on my regular early morning walk treading along the same well worn path along the river that I have traversed for many years. As I walked along the path I began to think about the word ‘path’ and how we use it in the English language. The more I delved into the word as I walked I realised maybe there is another way forward in making life decisions.

Definition of Insanity

While walking I thought about the famous quote, often attributed to Albert Einstein:

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Here I was doing my regular morning walk, all the time thinking about things and expecting magically that answers to my life’s deepest questions will be solved through doing two things at once – walking and thinking.

Feeling Your Way

What I did get from that morning’s walk was nonetheless profound…and what was that? That maybe the solution for me wasn’t to try to figure it all out but to do the opposite.

Maybe instead of thinking it was time that I use my walks as a time of ‘non-thinking’. Could the answers to life’s questions be found simply through letting go of thought and entering that space between thoughts? Could life’s answers come through feeling our way forward instead of trying to think our way through?

Walking Meditation

Meditation, the art which involves sitting still isn’t a practice I have ever been able to master. Walking meditation is more where on that moment I realised I needed to be. Walking meditation is simply focusing on one’s movements to free our minds of thoughts.

Middle Ground

It is in that ‘medi’ or middle ground where we discover fertile ground. Just like a fresh new seedling begins to emerge out of the earth, so too can our thoughts when we have had time for them to sit still.

The Way of The Heart

Walking is an incredible tool to help us ‘find ourselves’ or our path forward. We may not always find ‘all the answers’ but if we listen carefully to our heart instead of our head we may find guidance.

Heartistry

Something magical happens when we let go of thought and ‘follow our heart’. How many of us light up when we hear stories of someone who has followed their heart? Often these stories are filled with great depth of passion and feeling.

Walking It Off

How many times have you felt enraged and were about to ‘tell someone off’ or make a rash decision and were given the advice to simply ‘walk it off’?

Walking it off gives us time to allow ourselves to calm down, and for our heart to kick in so we can see the big picture instead of that moment of passion.

Most people would argue it gives time for the rational mind to kick in. In many cases that’s true but I tend to think it gives time for our heart intelligence to guide us.

The Homeopath

I tend to believe that disease is as many people describe brought on by feeling ‘ill or not at ease’, literally ‘dis-ease’. Festering thoughts can cause us to feel uneasy. This can cause stress, anger, depression and anxiety.

While we can go to doctors for ‘cures’ and relief from our dis-ease, often the best cure is finding equilibrium or balance in our lives.

A homeopath is a practioner of a curative treatment, yet on a deeper level, we all are homeopaths. We all have the ability to find balance or stasis and practices such as yoga, walking and meditation are just some ways to rebalance ourselves. Physical movement can help us regain the middle ground of emotions.

Homeostasis

Often physical activity can help us to find relatively stable equilibrium, making us feel calm and relaxed and free from deep anxiety.

The Path

In each moment of our lives we are making decisions that keep us in bondage of suffering or release us from it. -‘pathy’ is an adjective meaning suffering. For example, a psychopath is a person who suffers from a psychological disease.

The decisions we make whether conscious or subconscious, whether head or heart based, set us on a trajectory and along a path. The path may take us towards suffering or away from it. Sometimes, the path may contain both.

Empath

As I walked along the well-trodden path the other morning, letting go of thought was crucial to let go of suffering in that moment and be in the moment.

An empath is someone who can connect to another person’s feelings. The word ‘empath’ literally means ‘in feeling’. For me an empath’s meaning can be extended to mean a person who is deeply sensitive to the world around them. Someone who picks up on energies around them as inner feelings.

Ask and You Shall Receive

The King James Version of the Bible in Chapter 7, Verses 7-8 reads:

7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek and Ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you;
8 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocked it shall be opened.

That morning’s walk I remembered that on walks in nature that I would often ask a question before starting a walk. The secret however, to receiving guidance was simply to then ‘let go’. It is important to let go of the question and allow the steady rhythm of the walk take you out of your mind and into your heart and body.

Let Go and Let God

A neuropath is someone who has becomed sensitive to the environment around them. They are highly sensitive to their ‘inner feelings’. They are a well calibrated instrument that can pick up on the tiniest almost non-existent signals.

It is in this state where our mind is at rest can our heart and body pick up on these subtle cues that nature/God/the Universe provide. It is in this liminal state where we are given messages, signs, omens that we are able to pick up on.

We are always guided, we need simply to enter the space of no mind, no thoughts, that quiet and calm place where we are free of noise, static and distractions.

Trail Blazer

The messages, signs or omens that we pick up, often as ‘feelings’, may be very subtle and by no means are life changing (but may be). They help us to adjust our trajectory through life by a degree or two which can mean huge changes over the course of our lives.

These feelings can often also make us feel ‘uncomfortable’. We are moving often beyond our comfort zone as we blaze a new trail. Trail blazing is taking you into the unknown. It can be filled with trials and suffering, anxiety and fear as well as excitement and passion.

Pave Maker

Just as new thoughts can blast new neurone paths in our brain, the more we keep to our new paths, our new decisions, the path becomes easier to traverse.

We become pave makers not pace makers. We line our own path, making it easier for us to walk forward.

Happiness

While we in our own way strive for happiness, whether it be acquiring things, connecting with others or reaching goals, what we are all after is that ‘feeling’. Possibly we are all neuropaths after all.

Maybe becoming ‘sensitive’ to our feelings, and allowing our monkey chatter to quiet down. Maybe knocking on the door and entering into our inner space between thoughts may help us to allow our hearts to guide us.

That morning’s walk reminded me to ‘follow my heart’. Vague as it seems, and still not clear on all the ‘details’, the biggest reveleation for me was that happiness lies in that homeopathic balanced state, that middle ground between thoughts, those moments where thoughts stand still, where we are in the zone. It is in those fleeting moments do we glimpse truth, not with our mind but through our heart and ‘feelings’.

Your Path

Everyone’s path to happiness is different. We are all on our own paths of self-discovery. We will all discover different things that will provide us with different wisdom and will inform us to make different decisions.

Happy Medium

Yet, one thing that can help us all is to get in touch with your ‘feelings’. Discover your inner neuropathic self. To walk the middle ground, to enter the gap between thoughts that can bring balance to our emotions. Happiness lives in that space, the space we call the happy medium.

It is a space which is our natural state, where we are in balance or homeostasis. It is that feeling of coming home to ourselves.