Today I have been thinking about a beautiful phrase that can sum up as our approach to life. It is the phrase 'bloom where you are planted.' It goes back to the metaphor of life being a river with eddies and currents and rip tides and side pools. There are currents that we can end up in the middle of without even realizing it.
As we proceed with learning what our purpose is here on the planet, we can get sidetracked so easily. It is a spiritual practice to find our passion versus our obsession or addiction.
We can end up holding onto a direction that is not ours and fight with all we have to maintain our perceived direction - even though so muich of the feedback is pointing a different way.
I have come to points in my life where I was headed in the wrong direction. But the part of my mind in charge ignored all the warning signs and kept me on the wrong path. It didn't feel right; it didn't appear right; but I was intent on making it happen. The lies I was telling myself caused me to work so very hard and the resistance energy was huge. When I came to the place of letting go to the truth, the relief I felt echoed throughout my inner landscape. It seems like letting go is often very painful and hindsight is so perfect.
We as human beings work so hard to achieve a goal that we end up holding on tightly. In my first marriage, my wife energetically left the marriage long before we took the step to divorce. All the signs indicated the marriage was over. I later found out she had moved in with another man while giving me the illusion that we were living together. But do you realize how hard I was working to hold on to something that wasn't there? I had grown up with the belief that the vow I made during the wedding ceremony was sacred. Marriage was a spiritual sacrament conducted for life - no matter what!
Even with all the indicators that there was no marriage left, when I asked for a divorce it felt like a huge failure in my life. I was in absolute shock when she agreed and we started the process. I was in such shock I could not function.
I had to climb on a bus and ride four hours to San Jose where my symbolic 'parents' met me at the bus station. I ended collapsing in the arms of my aunt and I spent a week there as they healed me with nurturing love.
Even though letting go was the healthiest step to take I still had an entire inner world wanting to still hold on.
I then ended into another chapter of holding as I tried to rescue my next wife and four step kids. I believed in the friendly universe and they believed me so we had some miracles. However they soon retreated to their world of struggle and doom and again I had to let go.
But isn't that the flow of life? One part of it is the remembering and forgetting I always talk about. But the other part is the holding on and letting go. We are always in the process of letting go.
I wrote a song called "Let Go, Let Go, Let Go." The first verse stares "sometimes I get silly and I try, to understand it all and wonder why. Then I find I know, it's about letting go, slow down, take a breath. slip right into the flow." Verse two "seems so easy and yet we forget, it's a natural function and yet. We work so hard to hold on, we think it helps make us strong. And in the face of evidence in holding on we think we belong."
Letting go everything makes life flow easier. Let go and there is relaxation and relief. Let go and we open the door to the next step. It clears the landscape and re-connects us in a deeper way to spirit. Just let go...........
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