It is not what you read. It is not what you hear. It is not what you think you learned. It is what you experience, what you embody, what penetrates deep into your heart, your head, your soul.
Experiential. Thought & knowledge in action.
Not sure how it happens. Lessons learned. Wisdom gained. Often it is the small moments, the little flashes and insights. So small and incremental, you almost don't notice.
So yes, often you find yourself knowing things you thought you knew long ago. But you realize what you thought you knew, you didn't really know, until those moments when you actually find yourself living the knowledge.
So yes, we all must be uniquely us, we must be alive in the moment, the present, and bring all of ourselves to the moment, hold nothing back. Fully embodied. Fully engaged. Even if it's risky, and it is, fully alive. And at the same time, we must understand that "it isn't about us."
We offer ourselves up. We serve the moment. We serve others. We dare to be ourselves fully, but do this gracefully, humbly, not an act of ego, an act of ego-less-ness. We are alive in the moment. We subsume ourselves, or are swallowed into the moment.
Hard to explain. Maybe harder to do. Maybe it just happens and then you figure out later, once the dust clears...