The River

Once again, I find myself behind, needing to copy material from my written journal to blog. Partly, my back and neck have been asking me to avoid the computer the last month, other than to do my required freelance work and check emails. Partly, I have been busy enjoying the out doors and culture and friends, and most partly, I have been enjoying space and quiet.

From 4/15 Saturday/sunday

This has been a wonderful week. That was my intention at the beginning of it. Today, I took a solo artist's date. I saw the pulitzer prize winning play "Our Town" at the Santa Fe Playhouse. This was my first visit to the playhouse, though I had been meaning to check it out for a while.

At the start of the play, I noticed I still had this slight feeling that I was holding a weight, holding more pressure than I should. The weight of anxiety, totally needless and useless especially given my expectation that I "should" be completely happy right now on my artists date. And I was pretty happy... just not totally happy, something was pricking me. I just felt like I "should" be more happy and content given all the blissful things that have happened lately (a trip with girlfriends to 10K waves followed by lobster truffle oil pizza, Cookies and tea over board games at a mansion, a fun cocktail party 2 nights ago, etc.) So why this weight? I paused and looked right at the weight and realized it was one I have confronted before (and probably will have to again). It is the pressure and anxiety I place on myself to be doing something noticeable/successful/big with my life right now. Me, me, me. Making it happen, rushing the course.

Wait. I told that part of me. I give this responsibility back over to its true source, mystery. It is out of my hands and not my ego's role at all to direct the river. I am exactly where I am meant to be right now. I am on my path. In fact, I can't do anything ever to get off my path. I am on my path like my shadow is always behind me on a sunny day. I can always know that I am guided. The things I am meant to learn and experience are brought to me as much as I bring myself to them. I also believe that if something is passed by the first time in life, if its meant to a be a part of my path, the opportunity will come along a 2nd time or a 3rd time.

Lightness. Weight of my chest. Congestion out of my mind. Underlying fear that I am not living up to my potential recognized, acknowledged, appreciated and let go of. Deep breath. Now I can thoroughly enjoy the show.

And what a show! The theme of the play reiterated all that I'd been coming to terms with the moment before it started. The theme involved beauty in everyday existence, noticing the small meanings of life and being conscious of them while you are alive. Being content with what you have and where you are and being satisfied by the simple daily things: sunrises, full moons, midnight blooms.

Later, after the play, taking a walk to Kakawa Chocolate House to meet a friend, another weight dropped off as I realized, "You know, it doesn't matter where I am, where I go, whether I stay in Santa Fe or go off traveling again, the process will blossom and unfold just as it is meant to. I can trust in this unfoldment to be no sooner and no later than it will be. The river is going to run to the same place. I'll run in whatever river I'm meant to run in."

The pressure and anxiety and feeling of not enough, of dissatisfaction, will indeed return whenever I again get caught up in the mental trap that "I" am the one directing the river. What a ridiculous concept! and yet we do it all the time!  Of course, when that happens, I will feel that unrealistic, hopeless amount of pressure. All I need to do when this starts to happen, is look the fear directly in the eye, acknowledge it, and remember that I am guided and that the river exists already. It is not for me to create it. I can trust it to carry me. I can give myself to it and let it live itself through me instead of trying to live myself all on my own. I can become a channel in the river, of the river, for the river. I can remember that I am on my path when I am doing simple, mundane things or glittering stimulating things. The river is a process, dynamic, in motion, flowing. Both unpredictable and predictable. Predictable in that I will die, that I will transform. Unpredictable in the details. I can trust the river to move through me, shape me, excite me, swallow me, float me, nearly drown me, and, eventually, transform me.

A few hours later, I opened the book I am reading, called "Cutting through Spiritual Materialism" and read just what I needed to hear to sum up the lessons of the day:

"Let be and not care anymore; don't possess the letting be as belonging to you, as your creation. Open, let be, and disown. Then the spontaneity, the awakened state springs out" (169)

"Not expecting anything, we do not get impatient" (174) "Patience also feels like space...being aware of the space between the situation and oneself" (175)

"Letting go of the self rather than working so hard to improve ourselves..." (180)

What a wonderful thing to realize and remember whenever "I" try to take credit or create the river, that self-developemnt is really about letting go of the self! not further grooming and polishing the personality.