Sometimes it won’t go the way you intend it. Sometimes you’ll make a mistake (or three). You’ll miss a deadline, you’re overestimate or under-deliver. There are a thousand-and-one ways to screw up. And at some point you’ll make that misstep.
But, it’s okay. It happens. More often than not it’s a revoverable misstep, and if it isn’t – it’s not the end of the world. No one has screwed up so badly that the world ceased to exist, because we are still here.
So let it go. Move on. It’s okay. There’s always tomorrow.
As I progress in my blogging, I start to think I’ve used titles before. Like Letting Go. I search. I don’t find it. Maybe the search bar doesn’t work like I mean it to. Or I actually haven’t titled one Letting Go. I don’t know for sure.
Either way, I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Letting go. Of the past. Of stuff. Of the personal baggage that I hang on to. It’s little things.
This item went to the trash tonight:
Jamaican-made bird feeder from coconut.
I had purchased it from a street vendor in Jamaica – exactly which area I don’t recall. I was in Jamaica for a mission trip with my significant other. She and I are no longer together. I also have no relationship to speak of with any of the church members that went on the trip.
I think I paid $10. I could have gotten it for cheaper. But the words of a very persuasive priest came back to me.
“While talking with a parishioner,” he said in his homily, “she was bragging about how she had talked the seller down on some item she purchased on vacation.” [I believe it was in Mexico, but it could have been anywhere].
He proceeded to ask her, “Are you saying that you’re proud of taking away the money the this person needs to care for the family, put food on the table, and keep a roof over their heads?” This particular priest is an odd, joy-filled individual.
He then said, “I guess I shouldn’t go on vacation there. I’d be haggling the price up.”
So in looking at this strange coconut bird feeder, an authentic carved item from Jamaica, I couldn’t bring myself to haggle the price down.
But it no longer serves me. I took this picture of it to have the memory, but item itself has been let go.
How do you hold to no preference when an outcome obviously seems desirable? Making money vs. not? Being happy vs. not?
Being with the unhappiness, and then letting go it, will change the state of being. States are transitory. Everything is transitory.
Accept, acknowledge, let go.
Being present should eventually cause transition to the new state of being. Emotions are internal manifestations of events, not the events themselves. Thoughts are internal. Feelings are internal.
Sitting alone in a room won’t make you upset. What you think and feel in that moment may cause you unhappiness. But nothing in and around you is making you unhappy. You can acknowledge the feeling, and then try and let out pass from you naturally.
Accept. Let it go.
If this is difficult, turn your attention wholly to your surroundings, or, in a meditative way, to your breath. Focus on the sensations.
That is being present, and that is one path to non-preference.
If there is so much in your life that nothing else seems to fit, you have to let go of some of it. Otherwise the new will never come your way.
The new is what we call out for – the reduction in stress; the better job; the relationship that will finally work out.
You must create space, so that the Universe can fill it.
Creating space in a positive way signals to the Universe that positive new can be sent your way.
It is, at its core, the law of attraction. But you don’t have to believe in it for it to work. Just thankfully, and honestly, let go of those things that do you more harm than good.
What I’m reading: Letting Go. David Hawkins writes about freedom from attachment, and what that might look like in the modern age. “The mind, with its thoughts, is driven by feelings. Each feeling is the cumulative derivative of many thousands of thoughts. Because most people throughout their lives repress, suppress, and try to escape from their feelings, the suppressed energy accumulates and seeks expression through psychosomatic distress, bodily disorders, emotional illnesses, and disordered behavior in interpersonal relationships.”
What I’m watching: A lot of nothing. I’ve flitted from Lost Girl to a few other supernatural tv shows. A bit of NHK network, the Japanese news channel with travel and language programming. I’m gearing up for the Halloween season, and I want to do some research on horror and mythos.
What I’m listening to: Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, narrated by Christian Rummel. I’d not read much by Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451 is really the only one I remember. I know I owned two short story collections, but I don’t recall what I had read from it. But I had a dream a few nights back – partially induced by sleep aids and Benadryl. It involved a traveling circus, and I was reminded of Something Wicked, so I figured I’d give it a go.
Other things that caught my eye:
“The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.” I read this in The Eye Never Sleeps, and it’s been raining in my head. In 2016 I gave up believing in a lot of definites. I started looking at the sometimes and maybes. Have no preferences. I guess that’s kind of been my mantra.
It’s been over two years since my engagement ended in unusual fashion. In hindsight, it seems unlikely that the relationship would have lasted, and surprisingly that it did last as long as it had. Roughly three years. Our twelve-year age difference (me being the elder) was likely to difficult to maintain.
Still, the resulting emotional disturbances I face were unexpected and traumatic. And it was only with the most tenuous strings that I was able to hold on to a semblance of life.
In the coming months I’ll write pretty openly about it, and some of the other tragedies that arose previously, including the death of my grandmother which resulted from an automobile collision, the onset of what was diagnosed as an autoimmune disease, and a period of incarceration (though I don’t necessarily view it as tragic).
The difficulty I’ve faced in writing on here has been wanting to be more open, yet still feeling the need to perpetuate the use of a facade. A social mask, pretending to be more well-adjusted, or acceptable, then perhaps I am. But I’m getting nowhere doing that.
That’s my commitment. That I’ll be open and honest on here, as I try to do in everyday life.
Michael's Musings 