Let Go

Let Go

letgo

Note to Self: Don’t be concerned about what you do.

This does not mean what you do does not matter. To say it doesn’t matter is to veil my concern with apathy. What I mean is, do not be attached to any particular thing or way. Let you be enough. Know you are enough.

Good and bad. Accept you as you are. There is no one better that you need to be.

photo credit: Syahmir

The People Who Don’t Get It

The People Who Don’t Get It

clueless

We see people and things not as they are, but as we are. How aware we are informs what we see—and how we see it.

Ubuntu – I am because you are.

People who don’t seem to get it are seemingly everywhere. We find them in our families, at work, and in all areas of our public and private lives; and it can be painful and frustrating to watch them behave so unconsciously. Even though we know true separation from them is an illusion, it’s not hard to find ourselves feeling intolerant of them, wishing we could be free of them.

Yet, they are a part of our world. We can not avoid them. We will deal with them—whether we want to or not, and whether we can understand them or not. The people who don’t get it may not be able to see what we can see, yet their vision is essential. They, like us, are in their own process of awakening. The light we each shine has a major purpose, to make the darkness more apparent.

As we shed light on what they cannot yet see, they too shed light on the unconscious places within us. What triggers us about their ways of being are places for us to explore. Through making the unconscious conscious, we see ourselves more clearly. Holding them in the light of our own energy, we do our part to awaken their light—and our own.

photo credit: Thomas Leuthard

Telling Yourself The Story

Telling Yourself The Story

astory

It all depends on how long you keep telling yourself the story that is feeding your anger. Your emotional reaction, your anger, it is a result of your conditioning. By nature, it only lasts a few moments. But if you feed the reaction, through your thoughts, it keeps going. And growing.

What was once an momentary emotion grows into something bigger. A story begins to build. An emotion can become a mood. The mood becomes a temperament. The temperament transforms your personality. Your day/year/life is now “ruined” not because of X occurrence, but because of what you are still telling yourself about X.

It’s the story that’s hurting you.

Oh yes, the emotion may be painful, but if you can experience it fully, in the moment as children do allowing it to pass without a story and without attachment, you can have your experience and be over it in a matter of moments. You can be over it not because you got what you wanted and not because it wasn’t painful, but because you know how to experience your emotions and discipline your thoughts. You know their importance and their place in your life.

While not a simple thing, not needing to create a story to spur your emotions on leaves you free to fully feel them and to thoughtfully express them. Finding yourself unattached to your emotional reactions and the stories they may arise, you allow them to pass, rightfully returning to your default state: happiness. Authentic happiness, which likely isn’t the storybook kind.

photo credit: Robyn Budlender

We Don’t Know What We Are

We Don’t Know What We Are

ghosts

Our true nature, who we inherently are, is expressed in all that we do. Yet most of us live without an awareness of this truth, and the practice of expressing who we naturally are becomes difficult to realize.

Instead, we find our selves striving, pushing, giving up; actions driven by our confusion over who we naturally are.

When we express our true nature, we are human beings — we are what we are. When we do not express our nature, we don’t know what we are. We are confused. Deluded.

We don’t know what to call ourselves. In our minds, we are something else other than what we are. We do not exist. We’re ghosts of our self.

We live in this ghost-like state, our true nature eluding us, until we find the courage to know our self (again). Open to being what we are, our true nature resumes itself.

We are found once again, through our own awareness of our self. Now, we know the true value of allowing ourselves to be what we inherently are.

photo credit: Laurent Henschen

Longer Than Expected

Longer Than Expected

photo credit: Scott Akerman

How do I balance my innate human desire to estimate how long something will take, with the reality that I often have little control over this truth?

Is the point to do my best in estimating, to get a general sense, and then to leave it? Is the point to do some planning, but to never decide that my expectations are true and correct? Is the point to create motivation to work towards the goal, rather than attaching to its timeline?

Perhaps our time estimates are funny games we play with our Self and with each other, in support of our motivation. If we think it’ll only take 2 years to realize, this feels more motivating than the 7 years it actually takes. Perhaps, we’d never undertake the action if we truly knew how much we’d need to put into it to achieve it. Perhaps, our collective need for estimates and time projections is simply a trick we play on our mind and ourselves, to encourage us to take the action in the first place.

We want to feel it won’t take that long to realize. We want to believe that other things in our life won’t arise and take us away from that goal, at least temporarily.

We, in our culture of instant gratification, want so badly for our dreams to be as easy to manifest as the things available to endlessly consume. We’d love to realize our dreams NOW. We’d love to bypass all the other work we haven’t factored into our plan. We’d love if we didn’t need to work on our Self in order to realize our dreams.

We’re only human. We can’t know until we know. But perhaps in coming to accept how arbitrary our timelines are, we can provide that understanding to others. Perhaps, because of this, one day, we’ll find ourselves relinquishing the power Time has over us.

When used kindly, timelines and estimates inspire us into action. When used unconsciously, they leave us feeling not good enough. We’ll likely never meet the exact timelines we set, so why not see and set them more truthfully? Let’s own that we create them to feel more in control of something (Life) than we truly are.

Your timelines and your planning undeniably support you in starting and in making movement, and yet it’s likely your goal will take longer than expected to realize. It seems this is the way it is. Be weary of yourself or anyone else who leaves you feeling less than because you haven’t yet reached your goals. Remember, as long as you’re working towards them, you’re a work in progress and you’re on your way.

photo credit: Scott Akerman