Waiting

What we see depends mainly on what we look for.
~John Lubbock

I did my morning practice out on my deck this morning. We finally did our "spring cleaning" on it this weekend and it's finally user-friendly again. It felt so good to be experiencing my little world from a slightly different perspective, breathing in the cool, crisp air as the morning fog burned off, feeling the sun warm the back of my neck as it broke through. You know, it's funny, when I do visioning about what I want my life to look like, there's always a little sun room or something where I do my morning practice with a cup of hot tea at my elbow. But today was the first day, perhaps ever, that I actually had a cup of hot tea at my elbow while I did my practice. I suppose that's a gesture of taking it one step at a time. No sun room yet, but I do have a lovely deck and I can always make myself a cup of tea wherever I am.

The past week or so it's like I've been in a waiting mode. I'm sure there's a better way to describe it--waiting sounds so angsty. But it's like there's something coming and all I have to do is make room for its arrival. Doing anything else could be potentially counterproductive. And so here I've been, waiting. Of course, I probably could have found better ways to do so--I'm pretty sure playing The Sims is not a critical step along my journey. Then again, it did exactly what I needed it to do--it occupied my Intellect, giving it something to feed off of, someone else's life to try to control down to the smallest degree, and stopped worrying itself over my life. It's left me feeling light, free, and ready.

I do not know what my next step is, nor do I know the when and how of the arrival of my knowing. But for today, it's enough for me to let go of my expectations of what I should be doing and just allow myself to be, and in the meantime, I can soak up all the wonderful energy provided by sitting on my deck with a cup of tea at my elbow. Namaste.

Photo: "Lotus bud 2," originally uploaded by tanakawho

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Bodhidharma quote

When mortals are alive, they worry about death. When they're full, they worry about hunger. Theirs is the Great Uncertainty. But sages don't consider the past. And they don't worry about the future. Nor do they cling to the present. And from moment to moment they follow the Way.

~Bodhidharma

Living with uncertainty

This past week has been such a good reminder for me that life is what happens when you're making other plans. My overdeveloped intellectual, masculine, left-brain side of me has been absolutely writhing with impatience as I've essentially accomplished nothing that I set out to accomplish. I had all these plans for how I was going to get back on track, or even better, how I wasn't going to get thrown off track in the first place by my trip to Georgia. My intellect was already expressing disappointment with me that I hadn't been blogging regularly and so I downloaded the 10th A New Earth webinar to watch on the plane with the intention that I would even post my comments from Georgia without missing a beat. The universe must have been laughing at me, for when I turned on my laptop at 30,000 feet the file was gone. All attempts to watch the webinar since I've been home have been derailed by everything from computer failure to 100 degree heat.

I've had similar experiences with most of the rest of my too long to-do list to the point where I just have to relax, laugh, and say, Okay, what do you want from me? When I sit still and listen, I receive a gentle response that comes from the spiritual, feminine, right-brain side of me reminding me just to be, to let go, to take care of myself, to be myself, and all the rest of it will fall into place. I'm reminded that now is the time for me to relax into the mystery of life, to learn to live with uncertainty, to focus on BEING instead of doing. This is my gift both to myself and to the world, because through being I can become what I came here to be, which really is just simply ME.

My life has always been fairly well planned. I didn't have a sense of what I'd be doing 5 or 10 or 30 years from now, but I had a feel for the rhythm of it, for the texture of it. My ambitions would take me far in my work and I would be very successful. I believed in the common wisdom of climbing the corporate ladder, using my current job to get a better job, working hard so that I would be well rewarded. This was my DOINGness, my masculine energy, my left-brain intellect at play. But I was never happy in my work, never happy with the rewards, never happy with the success. It all felt empty and without purpose. I knew there was more to life than what I came to think of as "making other people rich." I knew that my true purpose lay in a different direction, but this energy was so strong in me that I couldn't escape it.

I left that world a little over 7 months ago, and it feels like I've been in a retraining mode all these months. It's almost like I've been in physical therapy, strengthening my right-brain so that it can at least find a balance with my left-brain. In some ways, I've had to swing the pendulum pretty far in the opposite direction to get the energy shaken up enough that a balance can occur, and I may need to live from a place of BEING for a while yet before a balance is possible. I'm learning how to live my life without a plan. That doesn't mean I don't have a vision--in fact if anything my vision is much clearer, much stronger than it ever was before. But I'm not caught up in "how" I'm going to get there. My focus is on allowing a little bit more of the mystery to unfold each day, enjoying the ride, having fun with the process, finding peace in the present moment.

Are you at peace with the mystery? Can you find peace in the uncertainty? No matter how much we plan, how little uncertainty we think there is in our lives, life really is what happens when we are making other plans. Just like the present moment is the only one that is, life is nothing but uncertainty. We do not know what the next minute or hour or day or month will bring. When we learn to be at peace with this truth, we can truly appreciate where we are in this moment, and we can make room for BEING in our lives and begin to pave the way for what is truly important in our lives, begin to live our lives as fully and richly as possible, begin to be Who We Really Are. Namaste.

Photo: "What does this picture mean to you?," originally uploaded by chema.foces

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