little shifts

HOLY ANGEL CAKE! It's been more than a week, unbeknownst to me...until this morning when a friend asked "are you okay????". He mentioned that I hadn't posted anything in 'a while' and was worried that something was 'wrong'. Made my heart swell, and then...a giggle.

Truth be told, (of course. don't I always?), I've been on an odd little trip lately. Not 'bad' nor 'good'...just a trip. Taking it all in and letting things just BE for a change. Not the easiest thing to do sometimes, but oh-so-necessary. So, having said that, perhaps a bit of sharing is in order?

Rather than doing the whole "me. me. me." thang, I'm going to pose a few puzzlers that I've been mulling over, and see what kind of feedback ya'll have to offer. It's always delightful to get feedback, especially given that those of you who read this blog have always been so forthright and kind. Gives a girl some ease knowing there isn't going to be any ugliness comin' back at her, ya know?

So then...

I've known for some time that the majority of ailments that befall us (puny humans. giggle) are rooted in emotional seeds. Stress is the number one cause of most maladies, including the 'big ones' like heart dis-ease and cancer, neurosis (duh!) and even sociopathic disturbances. I could give you tons of statistics on this subject, but let's not go there. Boring and irrelevant. The point is, I've known this and still have had a bit of a struggle balancing what needs to be balanced. But what if...

What if the whole enchilada isn't so much about the knowing, but about the feeling? What if it's about just allowing things to be what they are without trying to 'work your way through' it? What if, instead of praying or meditating or chanting or whatever, we were to just sit somewhere and be with whatever it is that's causing us pain? Physical, emotional or mental. Doesn't matter. Rather than trying to figure it out or get it out, we were to just sit with it and BE. What if?

Also, what if we were to accept, fully and completely, that who we are and how we are is absolutely perfect? Rather than saying to ourselves, "Gee. I think too much. Maybe I outta get out of my head and into my soul. Maybe I'm just not capable of ....", rather than going there, what if we were to accept and be happy about who we are. What if we were to observe instead of immerse? What if we were to wrap our arms around the very things that we thought were the cause of our pain? What then?

I hear people saying "People don't change. They are who they are and no amount of therapy is going to change that core person." And whenever I hear this I feel myself immediately bristle. I want to shout at them, "WRONG! PEOPLE CAN CHANGE!" But lately I've made the choice to NOT shout or argue or convince because I've found that it doesn't help; not them nor myself. It's that whole "pushing against" thing. What's the point? It doesn't really matter what anyone else thinks. What matters is what "me" thinks. In the course of this new approach I've come to see that there is much to be gained from not pushing back. In my experience, this is an enormous shift. But then, this is coming from someone who has made it her life's mission (previously!) to school people. HA! You know that expression: "You can lead a horse to water..."? Well, that is precisely the picture that comes into my head when I think about pushing back. Ya can't make 'em drink, Missy!

I believe we are all very much creatures of habit. We get into our little routines, not just with our daily activities, but also with our thought patterns and responses to the world. NO. Not 'responses'. REACTIONS. We are innately wired to react. Again, there is a scientific explanation for all that, but I shan't go there either. It begins when we're in the womb. And it continues until we have our little epiphany...and then the changes can begin. Rather than reacting, we can choose to respond instead. Yes. There is a difference. Look at the words:

RE-act: to act or perform again.

When we react, we are literally RE-acting whatever comes at us. If someone is being a jerk and we react, then we're a jerk back. When someone pushes a button, we push one of theirs. RE-ACT.

Not such a good feeling.

Then there's response. Response, by definition, is: to reply or answer in words. Hmmmmm. Different? Me thinks so. One implies action, the other implies thought. From my perspective, there's a time lag...in which one can control what comes next rather than just mindlessly engaging in what might be a less-than experience. Kinda like the difference between having somebody toss a baseball at you when you're NOT wearing a mitt, and having that same person toss it when you're standing ready. In the former scenario, the reaction would be to duck so as not to get hit. The latter would be to catch the ball. See the difference?

Okay...so there are a host of ways that we all choose to be in the world. Some folks are perfectly okay with going through the motions, always on the defense, waiting for that ball to come flyin' outta nowhere. Other folks choose to trust that if the ball comes flyin' they're going to see it long before it hits them. The key here? Trust.

Somehow everything always lands on trust. Trusting Self. Trusting Source. Trusting the Universe. Trust is where I always land...and navigating the often murky waters in between seems to be the 'pushing against' part. So what if...rather than tug on the oars of this boat I'm sailing, muscling my way upstream, I could let go of those oars and just let the stream carry me?

Whaddya think?