Today is Saturday and I’m writing my blog post a day earlier than normal because friends are coming to Paris Sunday, and I am going to show them around the city. But I like my Sunday routine, with my coffee and Radio Deluxe!
I need Flex-ability...
Getting out of my routine, my habitual ways, is always a struggle. Sometimes a big one. Even little hiccups cause a glitch in the matrix of my thinking – which as you know (or should know) is always right (*joke light flashing*) and runs on a single track.
But the human mind generally is geared toward routine, toward sameness. It makes life easier and makes conscious thinking less necessary. If I always eat the same thing for breakfast, I don’t have to think about it.
Sameness has its place, but a flexible mind, one that is able to adjust with ease, is invaluable for living a fully abundant, spiritual life.
Traveling is a great example of how sameness can become “stuck-ness.” I like traveling. Actually, I like the thought of traveling. And I genuinely like being on the road, or in the air, or at my destination.
But when it’s time to pack my bags and leave my door, I have anxiety. I won’t be on my couch tonight, watching my shows and eating my snacks. I won’t have my own bed. What can go wrong? What WILL go wrong?
Why am I doing this to myself, is the thought I have before I leave… or before I go on stage to sing. I could be home, safe… and bored!
So, while routines can be stabilizing and comforting, while they can make life easier, they just as easily can make life dull, a rut which is difficult to leave.
Being on autopilot does have advantages, certainly. When working with Prosperity Now! students, I often use the analogy of learning how to drive to illustrate this phenomenon.
Learning new emotional and spiritual tools can be intimidating for many people.
Tools like forgiveness, intuition, courage, trust, faith, zeal, love, serenity, honesty, joy, open-mindedness, willingness, service and prayer and meditation, to name but a few aren’t usually taught in school and aren’t necessarily modeled in our families, but they are indispensable if we are ever going to create a new, fabulous life.
But some people find them intimidating, people who think they won’t “get it.” So, this analogy helps people realize how we can make new skills become second nature. By practicing these skills, people can grow and begin to live the life of their dreams.
So, think back to when you first learned to drive, a major challenge in many people’s lives. There’s so much to do! So many things to pay attention to – the gas, the brakes, the steering wheel, the mirrors, your foot, your hand, your speed, etc.
Not to mention everything in your field of vision – the cars coming at you, the cars behind you, the parked cars, the pedestrians, bicycles, the intersections, the stoplights, etc. etc.
At the beginning, it took every ounce of focus, of mindfulness to keep the car going straight and not hit something… or be hit by something!
But now? If you’ve been driving for a while, you don’t need the same intense concentration on all the many elements to safely drive. Just the opposite! Now, you most likely drive with ease. Most of these essential driving functions are on “auto-pilot.”
Skilled drivers eat, fiddle with the radio, talk on the phone (hands-free of course) and daydream. Hopefully they’re not driving with their knees while putting on makeup or texting, but people do!
The moral is: what once was totally out of our comfort zone and required tremendous effort eventually became second nature.
Just as driving became easy and mostly automatic with practice, we also can gain mastery over the spiritual tools that we need to practice – to raise up in consciousness and heal our lives, so we can live a life of ease and abundance.
We forgive more quickly. We're slower to anger. We’re quicker to recognize tension and relax. We are more compassionate and less judgmental. We laugh more and scowl less. We are more generous and less miserly. We have more courage and are less afraid.
Overall, our inner balance is one of flexibility, while our consistency becomes an asset, not a rut. Our inner life is directly mirrored in our outer life.
How flexible are we? How easily do we roll with change?
How comfortable are we in our routines and habits, without getting stuck in a rut – mentally or in our day-to-day?
Do we laugh at our foibles, or are we too often deadly serious?
In recovery, there is a saying: Learn to wear life as a loose garment.
I find that is a beautiful reminder to lighten up. Loosen up. Let go. Breathe. Relax my jaw muscles, my shoulders, tense and guarded. Expand my mind, my thinking. Check my attitude, my expectations, my beliefs.
These things are not easy nor are they automatic for me. They take mindfulness, practice, repetition. Fortunately, life is on my side, and will continue to give me countless opportunities to get it right – not perfect, but a little more quickly, a little more easily.
A light hand on the tiller of my life. And my hands off the tiller of everyone else’s.
The Tao Te Ching is replete with admonitions to take it easy.
Tao Poem #60 is a simple, poetic treatise on governing lightly, whether it’s my attitude or ruling a country:
Governing a country
Is like frying a small fish
You spoil it by too much poking
Poem #73
The Tao is easy
It does not compete
Yet it always triumphs
Poem # 76 is entirely about flexibility and ease:
People are born gentle and weak. But at death they are hard and stiff. Green plants are tender and supple. At death they are withered and dry. Therefore the stiff and unbending are disciples of death. The gentle and yielding are disciples of life. Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle. A tree that is unbending is easily broken. The hard and strong will fall. The soft and weak will overcome.
Poem #45 ends
Through movement and stillness
Allowing all things
The Master takes things as they come
Stepping back
The Master models the Tao
Movement and stillness. Flexibility and sameness. Being at one with both aspects, both manifestations of mind, we will see the outer world begin to shift and conform to our new attitudes, beliefs, and practices.
Our new ease of living.
Happy Sunday,
Johnny
I am available to do Prosperity Now! individual or group sessions or general life-coaching, I Ching readings, dream interpretation or join us for our weekly Wednesday Course in Miracles group.
Please sign up by email at prosperitynowlifeofdreams@yahoo.com
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