What can you learn from a fourth-generation lion tracker — someone who literally follows tracks to find lions? A dozen excerpts from The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life that may help you make your next decision, and then your next one, and then your next one…
- “Life is a thread made up of faint signs that lead to the manifestation of something unique. Inside you is a part of you that can feel what your gift, purpose, and mission are. That part of you is always evolving. To live on its trail, you must become a tracker.”
- “I suspect that part of growing up is that you will as a matter of course fall asleep in your own life. It will happen. The journey out of that will begin with the desire to hear the call. The desire itself has an energy. Tune in, and listen for a path.”
- “Most of us have so much of the social conditioning of modern life, that our inner track has been lost. We live with our attention directed outward, we focus on the social queues of our culture. We lose ourselves in ‘shoulds’. What you know to do is deeper than that. No one can tell you how to know what calls and brings you to life; that’s your work to do. The people I admire have at times made choices against all convention and rationale. They followed something deep within. They tracked what called and opened new trails of transformation.”
- “Everything in modern life seems to be about security. We strive for security. But at what cost? I know that one of the great dangers in my life would be to live without danger. We must leave the safety of the village and venture out onto the trail of something wild and uncertain and as yet undefined. We must live in that trail, propelled forward by a set of clues only you will recognize by the aliveness they bring out in you. You must teach yourself to see your track. You are here to live. Find the trail of something wild and dangerous, and worthy of your fear and joy and focus.”
- “Intense curiosity is the means by which life pulls us to a destiny bigger than what we could have imagined for ourselves. I am pulled forward by the almost alive energy of the trail.”
- “Now walk and listen and smell. Each time there is more information. On the trail you will get something that feels like a clue, a break in the case, a sign. Like an instrument, tuning yourself to the information and the feelings it evokes, the people who are important to you, the things that bring you to life, the arrival of something meaningful, is its own kind of consciousness. You can easily miss this information if you don’t know how to see. Track awareness is how attuned you are to what is around you. It’s recognizing a track when it appears, it is teaching yourself how to see what is important to you. You must train yourself to see your track. You must train yourself to see what you are looking for.”
- “The body can tell you if something is right for you or not by the way it feels. We must learn to read the subtle tracks of the body. The way it relaxes and opens when something feels right. The contraction and tightness when we are not where we are meant to be. “How does that make you feel?”. “Terrible”. Then don’t do it. Track what makes you feel good and bring more of it into your life. Track what makes you feel lousy and do less of it. Know the call when it comes by the fact that not doing it would feel profoundly wrong.”
- “Find the first track, then the next first track, then the one after that. Work with what you have now, in the moment. Joseph Campbell said “If you can see your whole life’s path laid out, then it’s not your life’s path”. In life we get tremendous unknowns, and if we’re lucky, a first track, then a next first track. The first small beginning, and then the next small beginning. Dial huge possibilities into small practical actions. The tracker has the mentality to dial the impossibly vast down to the first track.“
- “I thought of all the people I had met who wanted a full vision for a new life. And then to move from where they were straight into it. I thought of all the people who told me that when they knew exactly what they wanted to do, they would leave the unfulfilling thing they were currently involved in. Be invested in the discovery rather than an outcome. Don’t jump to “and then what”. If you go and get some of what you need, you might get a second first track. The journey to transformation is a series of first tracks.”
- “Tracking is often a problem of non linear problem solving. The story never goes like you want it to. The sign is not the track you thought it was. The track runs cold. Paths you are tracking can disappear. Where you thought you were going vanishes. Accept that losing the track is part of tracking. Any place you don’t find the track is not wasted, but part of refining where to look. Losing the track is a space of preparation. Prepare yourself to hear the call. Alert, listening, noticing. No action is considered a waste. The key is to keep moving, adjusting, welcoming feedback. The path of not here is part of the path of here.”
- “Keep trying things, get feedback, find your flow. Even if you don’t know where it’s going, play with it. Remember to see how many unexpected things come into your life by living this way. It will be scary at times - let the fear bring you to life. Occasionally, a tunnel opens, revealing the sky like a gasp of breath.”
- “I don’t know where I’m going, but I know exactly how to get there.”
