Tag: not the doer

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I wound up recording it (slightly accidental).

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It’s exciting when something works out better than you ever imagined, right?

Yay, this is good….says the inner commentator.

The feeling within is alive, excited, thrilled.

Maybe you have the thought “I made it!” or “I did it!”

But I notice sometimes stressful ideas and feelings may follow on the heals of judging things as “good”.

It’s called “I have to keep this now.”

The mind follows a line of thinking that goes something like:

Cool. I got this. Hey, let’s raise the bar now. Get to the “next level”. Achieve, accomplish, keep the success going, push through it, now 10x this thing!

(Picture a British drill sergeant yelling “GO GO GO!! Look Alive!! Look Alive!!!”)

Even if you’re not that intense, how strange the movement of thinking so quickly orients to holding on to what you got, making sure you don’t lose. You’re managing yourself and your surroundings.

The other day I heard a good friend say “I don’t want to talk about getting the new job, cause I don’t want to jinx it.”

So cute, really.

We get so superstitious.

What I’m doing, saying, thinking could make something topple, or stay with me, or move against me, or support me.

Can’t get toooooo excited, or I might wind up disappointed later!

Dang.

It’s so much WORK.

But who would you be without the belief that you did it (whatever wonderful thing it was)?

This is really un-hitching yourself from the idea that someone is to blame….including for the good stuff.

I’m not taking away the accomplishment, or suggesting you’re not as competent, or that you didn’t work super hard to get somewhere, or that you weren’t the one practicing, learning, creating.

(Or am I?)

This is simply a little exploration in noticing that even getting what you think you want sometimes isn’t all its cracked up to be.

I’ve worked with so many clients in sessions or retreats who dream of lots of money, or being thin, or being healthy, or finding a mate, or having a rock star business, or becoming president (well, OK, not one person has ever told me they wanted to be president).

Nothing wrong with any of these….

….but who would we be WITHOUT the belief that I am the one who must push, make, try, grab, fight, or drive something into happening?

Do you notice the pressure that can happen with believing you are the one in charge?

And how the thought is very long-standing and has been around a long time that your life is up to YOU?!

Who would you be without this belief….in a good way?

I notice I feel very connected to the world.

All the people who have supported me, all the steps and lessons and teachers and hard times and easy times. My heart beating, my lungs going in and out, without me telling them how to do it.

I’d feel this moment right now, full of appreciation.

I’d thank my mind for thinking, thinking, thinking so very much and believing so many thoughts that it practically shorted out like an electrical current.

I just wouldn’t be against myself, without the belief that my-life-is-up-to-me-so-I-better-work-my-ass-off.

Very aware that there is not an individual solo me here running the show.

I turn the thought around: I did not do it.

It was done. It did me. 

Somehow all forces of the universe converged, and I was there, and it happened.

I wasn’t in command, much as the mind would like to think I was. Not the one or the thing at the helm, not the one in charge, not the do-er of it all.

No way. Impossible.

Can you find the lightness in letting go of the drive to get there, get it, achieve it?

This doesn’t mean lie down on the floor and do nothing.

I notice I rarely want to do that (although I did today for awhile….right down on the floor, on the red floral carpet….it was a good position for some reason).

It just means my hands are open and relaxed, and nothing is required.

Ahhhhhhh. Awe-some.

“One day I noticed I wasn’t breathing–I was being breathed.” ~ Byron Katie

Let the show play on!