Have you ever had the experience of not being able to rest when some future event is coming?
….like a long-awaited vacation, an important presentation to a group, the launch of a new business program, throwing a dinner party, writing a book, your kids starting school.
There’s an event coming. It’s kinda exciting. Maybe it’s wildly thrilling!
You want everything to be perfect.
Just the other day I had the privilege of working with an inquirer who noticed that she was getting sort of riled up about the in-laws coming to visit.
Suddenly, she needed to clean her house from top to bottom so it sparkled.
It wasn’t fun. She felt irritable. Her to-do lists were long and never-ending.
As I sit here on my couch in my little cottage, and glance up at the room between typing words, I can find the part of my mind that does the same thing, exactly the same thing.
There are some kind of white crumbs in a little clump on the carpet. The grass in the back yard that I can see through the kitchen glass doors (which have smudges along the edges) needs to be cut, and there are some dandelions invading.
I’ve got the perfect view of the area under the island chopping block in the kitchen that has dust, crumbs, and what looks like grease or something right under it.
The environment looks imperfect.
With these eyes, I remember looking at everything this way: my job has too long a commute, I need to do more weight-bearing exercise, I should have gotten a PhD after my Master’s degree, I’ll never speak French fluently, my grandpa didn’t teach me enough about business and money, I wish my dad had lived longer, I want to be enlightened.
These eyes are still here seeing, but when this view is questioned, then I noticed there is no grip or stress following the thought that whatever I’m seeing should be improved.
How odd.
No demand that I need to move-it-move-it, go to the store, start writing, make the call, finish the project, meditate for an hour, print out the form, get the vacuum.
But if I’m not worried, or active, or aware of that upcoming deadline…if I don’t get organized and send the proposal, buy the school supplies, sign that document…then life will be hard, sad, disappointing!
I’ll be a failure if I don’t get it done! Someone else will think I’m a failure if I don’t get it done!
I have to fix it! Or die trying!
“The French doors have been left open, and this big, simple-hearted golden retriever bolts through the doors, leaps the fence, and plunges into the water, in hot pursuit of ducks….The next day, I see muddy paw prints across the otherwise spotless floors, and my heart melts. As I clean the floors, the love that I experience for this animal is huge. I know what the prints are for. They connect me to my granddog and to my son and to the lightheartedness of the animal world, and I love that I am that.” ~ Byron Katie
Who would I be without the thought that I need to get things done, improve the situation, or fix it?
Weird, right?
When I first did this inquiry, I imagined that without the thought that I need to get on it and accomplish stuff, that I would never getting off the couch. Never doing anything. Never going to the gym. Never clean the dishes. Never return anyone’s phone call. Never meditate.
But that’s not what happened.
Without the thought that I have to do something, or get somewhere, I look up and around, I see more that’s here, right now. I smile inwardly.
As I do the dishes, I remember my grandma who they once belonged to, and think of my cute daughter who left this plate and fork in the sink.
I see the piles of papers and books on my own dresser and feel appreciation for such a fascinating person that I am that I want to accumulate so much material in the form of written words.
As I see my husband’s things collected on his dresser I see how much he reminds me of a bear, gathering stuff and setting it where he can see it, or storing it in boxes and putting it in the cave (the storage shed). So adorable.
Turning the belief around that I need to finish, complete, fix, accomplish, clean, wake up, or get something done…
…I sit with this idea that I do not need to do any of that.
“When we perceive from an undivided consciousness, we will find the sacred in every expression of life. We will find it in our teacup, in the fall breeze, in the brushing of our teeth, in each and every moment of living and dying.” ~ Adyashanti
Even just to get a taste of imagining that the turnaround is as true or truer, that I do not HAVE TO do anything, is sublime.
I don’t have to go clean under the kitchen chopping block, I don’t have to vacuum those white crumbs right now, I don’t have to stop writing, I don’t have to meditate, read, finish, “work on” whatever.
Just to even think of this idea, that you don’t HAVE TO. Test it, entertain it, see what you think about that.
It’s OK if you’re not too sure that would work very well. All it is, is an idea.
Could it be that all is well, alive, pulsing, moving without ME being involved?
Perhaps it is all imperfect and flawed and messy and chaotic and mysterious…. and that is absolutely wonderful, the way it is.
Which sort of winds up making everything seem…well…perfect.
Love, Grace
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