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Letting Life Unfold without 'Us'

Although the most constant aspect of our life is change, we can observe ourselves attempting to control everything in our environments.  Our physical bodies are programmed to automatically keep all inner processes within very narrow bands of constraints to optimise our existence.  We assist this by ensuring our external environment is as close to the ‘comfortable’ setting as possible.  If we stray too far outside our pre-set ‘safe’ limits, we experience fear/ primal and instinctual warnings, and move back to ‘life supporting’ conditions. (Out of gales, away from the range of carnivorous monsters etc).

Perhaps, we have also been imprinted with a pre-set social template (in utero, and later on within our chosen families) as small people.  Maybe this then shapes what we seek out for ourselves as we ‘grow up’/become dependent.  The social circumstances we instigate through our choices (conscious or not), can then be seen to give us the stage from/through which we play out our external lives.  But are we so tied into this that we fail to observe ourselves manipulating and adjusting to maximise what we believe is what we need within these?

As time moves on, some of us begin a spiritual quest - choosing to invest conscious effort in reconnecting with the essence of more of ourselves.  Once the choice to be of the world is replaced by a knowing that there is more, our inner journeying begins.  This makes life more challenging, fun, spontaneous and also, importantly, no longer needing to be a struggle.  If we choose to move the boundaries, we accept that as personalities, we are not in ‘control’ of many of the variables; we just need to grow out of our old beliefs, just as we grew out of our baby clothes as we physically developed. 

We seem to suffer/feel pain on all levels as we resist the very things that, on other dimensions, may be seen to have set up.  When we finally pay attention, and do what all religions/philosophies/books suggest, letting go the outcome desired, a force/source other than self (constructed personality) pours through, and life/spirit flows.

Over the years, I have watched my own relationship to suffering change.  My greatest teacher turned out to be Kathryn; the being-who chose me as her mother.  How could I accept the reality of a massively brain injured new-born?  How could I live with the prognosis and the sheer hell of each moment as each one unfolded into more horror and the precious child I had carried and loved become the stuff of every parent’s nightmare?  How could I as a caring mother, accept my daughter as she was and as she was heading to be?

The person I thought I was had to re-evaluate every aspect of what she had considered to be real.  I chose to undergo suffering as I held onto my personally unique perceptions of ‘reality’ which just did not fit into my new situation.  The struggle I experienced cut in my physical body as I persisted in trying to mould/heal her, myself and the entire outcome for all those whose lives touched ours, running the socialised beliefs perfectly.

As an active participant in my own dramas, this woman as the acupuncture practitioner, teacher and writer experienced, and observed struggle for eight years which felt, at the time, like several lifetimes of hell. 

Who I thought I was had to experience a huge shift.  A wise friend gave me a tape of Barry Neil Kaufmann (from the Option Institute in New York state) speaking of ‘love is to be happy with’ and ‘living in the now moment’.  I (my personality plus) rebelled - absolutely.

Much later, I did learn to live (sometimes) in and experience the ‘now’ moment with no expectations, no desired outcome and no carrying my hopes, fears and wishes ahead of me.  When I achieved this, the difference to Kathryn’s self expression was extraordinary.  She became as a ‘normal’ person - momentarily.  As I perceived differently, she was afforded the space to experience who she was and not be forced to live out what I wanted her to be.

As I shifted what I would accept, the matrix holding her so very tightly bound loosened up slightly.  As I was forced, time after time, through many different story lines, to relent and stop trying to shape the outcome, she and her/our life was afforded the grace to play within the clear space.  When “I” got put of the way, and let life flow, unencumbered by what “I” felt ‘should' happen next, vastly more wondrous things always happened.

I can now see very similar struggles being fought out in the personal lives of those who bring their damaged external selves to me for treatment.  As we all have a tendency in our culture to see as a ‘problem’, the grossly obvious symptom or reaction (messenger) rather than to trace this reaction back to its source or catalysing occurrence, we tend to ‘suffer’ longer than possibly needed. 

Whatever we believe ourselves to be is - just part of the whole.  Who we think we are is probably only the culturally bounded ego and personality aspect of ourselves.  To stand aside, to allow our soul force or higher self to direct our lives and to truly go with the flow, would allow all the hurting portions and spaces within ‘us’ to heal.

The motivation/reason for distortion from perfect would then no longer need to exist.  Its message would have been received, rather than silenced.  The attachment to attempting to mould ourselves, and those around us into what we, and they, are not, would diminish.  We could then perhaps experience much less struggle as we allowed life to simply happen.  When we choose to release the need for a desired outcome and when we drop the control we place primarily on ourselves, we can then be who we really are and a great deal of the previously ‘important’ parts of our lives can drop away.

The things I resisted with most effort in my life invariably turned out to be the very things I needed the most. 
When I stopped resisting, I allowed my life to unfold instead of trying to lead it to where I thought I needed to be. 

This simple change in focus may be the trigger all of us need to see that as we all create the life we find ourselves in, we are equally able to change it.  If it is uncomfortable, we need to move to a spot (within ‘our’ beliefs) where it isn’t.

(Make it so, that what we have is what we want).

Health Problems are really Life Problems

Cleverly disguised as ‘problems’, we try to change what we don’t want (the ‘problem’) whilst wanting to stay the same – hence CREATING the ‘problem’.  We may well be irked, and may well be stopped from continuing doing that which we think is who and what we are – and it may not suit the ‘self’ that likes getting its own way . . . . we have created a life to work through what we are stuck at.   Life as we want it to be often is just not going to happen. 

If we want what we can’t have, there is tension – and this tension often shows up eventually as body disturbances that then upset us further.  To solve these, we may even have to undo the puzzle that is hiding the disturbances’ real answers/gifts to the something else we need to recognise.

Life 'Problems' are really Life Answers

What we experience as illness and stress may simply be another aspect of ourselves saying ‘I don’t want to do this’.  Perhaps if we saw the people and events in our lives as props placed in our space for us to experience aspects of ourselves, a sense of gratitude rather than judgement might prevail.  

Maybe it is time to question what illness and health and life really allow us to be. 
How better to challenge us to move forward than to prod us into movement?

During my own personal journey, my personality/ego found it extremely inconvenient to have to bend and to change, yet how else would I have paid attention and grown?  I discovered that the ‘tragedy’ who appeared in my life as my daughter, allowed me to become a far more tolerant, compassionate, responsive, aware, and, wiser person than I had been, prior to having been stretched by life with her.

All of us find, if we sit and think it through, that those problems we thought we had when we were younger, actually allowed us to expand and grow, and as such, were often our best friends – although in disguise!