Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Let go and flow!

I was thinking this morning about the concept of paying taxes as a way to essentially force circulation into the economy. From a metaphysical perspective, holding on to anything--money or otherwise--stops the flow in and out of your life. The law of circulation says the more you give, the more you receive. When we think about taxes negatively, as something that is being taken away from us, that's another way to block the flow of energy for us. I'd like to shift that around today and recognize that I am giving this money, that it is part of the divine flow and a symbol of the circulation of money in my life. Just in writing that here, I already feel better about the checks I am mailing today and know that paying my taxes with love and trust is another way that I can open myself up to that divine flow. Care to join me?

I'd like to share with you an excerpt from Eric Butterworth's The Universe is Calling that I've always found inspirational. He's talking here about what it is we hold on to that keeps us small, keeps us trapped, but I think about these monkeys every time I'm holding on to anything too tightly.

     "An interesting system has been used for capturing monkeys in the jungles of Africa. The goal is to take the monkeys alive and unharmed for shipment to the zoos of America. In an extremely humane way, the captors use heavy bottles, with long narrow necks, into which they deposit a handful of sweet-smelling nuts. The bottles are dropped on the jungle floor, and the captors return the next morning to find a monkey trapped next to each bottle. How is it accomplished? The monkey, attracted by the aromatic scent of the nuts, comes to investigate the bottle, puts its arm down the long narrow necks, closes its hand around the nuts, and is trapped. The monkey can't take its hand out of the bottle as long as it's holding the nuts, but it is unwilling to open its hand and let them go. The bottle is too heavy to carry away . . . so the monkey is trapped. . . .

     Here is an imaging exercise for you to work with: Take [an] inventory, listing all the challenges, conflicts and difficulties that you may have. Let them be symbolized by the nuts in the bottle with the long, narrow neck. Feel your hand clasping a nut. Feel the frustration and pain of entrapment. Ask yourself, 'Am I content to have this bottle? Do I really want to be free?' There is only one way. Open your hand and feel your arm slipping out of the bottle. You are free. You might say, 'I let go of resistance, resentment, and anxiety.' Let it all go. There is no way to gain freedom unless you let go. Even God cannot set you free unless you follow the freeing call to let go."

Photo: "go with the flow...," originally uploaded by muha...

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