Life Itself

I longed for a mentor.
Someone to walk ahead,
turn back,
and show me the way.

I was in The School of Life,
But who would teach me?

I searched books, teachers, lineages.
I reached for voices that sounded like truth.
And still, something was missing.

No one came in the way I imagined nor expected.
No one held exactly what I was looking for…
just another breadcrumb on the trail.

No hand reached down from the clouds.
No perfect guide appeared with all the answers.

Instead… life met me.

Messy. Mysterious.
Unpredictable and precise.

It showed up in heartbreak and synchronicity,
in shocks and in sunrises.
It whispered in dreams,
held me through endings,
and nudged me through each new beginning.

It didn’t always look like wisdom.
Sometimes it looked like grief.
Sometimes it looked like failure.
But it was always reaching for me.

And yes, life sent people, too.
Not saviors. Not gurus.
Just souls carrying sparks.

Each arrived with a piece of truth
my soul longed to hear out loud.
A sacred recognition.

It was never just a person.
It was life itself.

Showing up through others,
through moments,
through silence and storm.

Life showed me that no one is meant to live on a pedestal,
and yet, everyone carries a piece of the divine.

A paradox.

The guru was always within.
And the path was always inward.

I rest in the truth
that I am held and guided
by the quiet magnetism that is life itself.

I trust in the benevolence
of a power greater than me
that also lives within me.

And I believe life is self-healing
and that every single turn is a step toward wholeness.

Life itself was always turning me back to myself:
To see myself.
Know myself.
Love myself.

And to remember that I was enough.
The one I had been seeking
was me.

And the God I had been reaching for
had always lived within—
a SPARK,
eternal and whole.

And that spark lived on through me.
Through my expression,
my voice,
my sacred strand of genius.

The Creator lives in me.
And that Spark of Creativity
is something we are all born with.

A flicker of the divine
seeking form
through our hands,
our hearts,
our art,
our lives.

Creation is remembrance.
Expression is worship.

And when I create
I am not just being myself
I am being one
with the force that made me.

Ashley Nichole