Letting Go

Lately I notice things shining. Shiny things that a while ago had no glow, just a dull patina.

For example, some years ago I was (and I use the term loosely) “given” a manger scene. This is from a well-intentioned family friend who has a habit of giving me fat clothes. You know the kind? “I’ve lost weight, would you like my old clothes that don’t fit my anymore?” So, I felt more dumped on than given. But I didn’t have a manger scene, so for a 2 or 3 Christmases I tried to make it work.

But the thing was it didn’t work. I didn’t have a place that was big enough for them. I felt like they just looked ceramics class ugly. So, instead of feeling joyful and “oh how beautiful!” every time I looked at that manger scene all I felt was “Ack! That thing is ugly. It’s too big! Why did I have to get the ugly manger scene!”  

And then while at my sister’s house for Christmas I realized that she had a perfect spot for the manger scene and all she had was a teeny tiny manger scene that got swallowed up by the space it was in. So, I checked with her (see? not dumping.) and she thought she’d like to give it a try.

And here’s the crazy thing. Not only does that manger scene fit in that spot. It looks gorgeous in that spot. Like the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, it has been completely transformed into a shiny happy thing of beauty.

I had to let it go so it could find where it would shine.

Another example: I have a bunch of interconnected acquaintances. There is this one woman — let’s call her Beth. She was married to Josh. After years of staying married and then living together but separately, they finally divorced. Another woman in that same circle, let’s call her Amanda, had also been through a divorce. And now Amanda and Josh have discovered each other and are madly, madly in love. And she is shining like I’ve never seen her shine before.

The marriage that wasn’t working had to be let go of in order to find the one that does.

So, this isn’t just a case of one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Here’s the lesson:

From manger scenes to marriages everything is meant to shine.

But sometimes we have to let those things go that can’t shine with us.

And we have to let go of the things that are dulling our own shine.

What the hell is with all the construction?

I’ve become a construction zone.

Maybe a deconstruction zone.

Maybe both at the same time.

At my office, I just survived several months of construction (power riveting, ratcheting, sawing, hammering, tile sawing, and yes, even pile driving). It was incredibly loud. Like loud to the point the contractor brought me earplugs. It was also inconvenient. I still don’t have an office that is back to rights and in fully functional condition.

And now, right next door to me the vacant lot is being transformed into a neighbourhood of 11 houses.

ELEVEN NEW NEIGHBOURS ARE IN MY FUTURE!

Can you feel my heart singing with joy?

Me either.

But my lack of joy has not stopped the big machines from coming in and now instead of having to go to the office to have the experience of a construction zone, I can have all the loudness and inconvenience of a construction zone right in the comfort of my own home.

This week pipes were installed underground. This required much digging, asphalt cutting, and pounding of dirt.

Oh the pounding! The glasses in the cupboard rattling. The windows and walls of my home shaking. It was a treat I tell you.

A flagperson had to flag me out of my own driveway.

Now I don’t want to go all Law of Attraction on you, but it’s got me to thinking…

Why would deconstruction and construction be happening quite literally all around me?

It has me feeling like Harold Crick in Stranger than Fiction. You know the scene where Harold has determined to do nothing to see if he can control his own fate? He sits at home watching whatever was on the tv when he turned it on, not even risking the simple act of changing the channel. And in the midst of his nothingness, a wrecking ball blasts through the wall of his apartment. A construction crew has read the address wrong on their orders.

But to me it means more than Harold can’t control his fate.

In our dreams our psyche is often represented by a house. A wrecking ball coming through the walls of your house indicates to me a change of consciousness. The old constructs of the psyche no longer apply.

Now my own home hasn’t changed, and my office has only changed insofar as it now houses a new pipe and I don’t yet have the new shelving installed — but all this construction around me is forcing me to change in response to it. Things are not the same.

And while I won’t go so far as to say I created this construction zone, it does reflect for me in the outer world my own inner reality.

I am not just in a deconstruction, construction zone. 

I am carrying a construction deconstruction zone with me. 

I am a construction deconstruction zone.  

Which when you come to think of it is pretty cool.

It’s alchemy.

It’s the Phoenix.

It’s the Dance of Shiva

It’s the continuos force of creation and destruction.

It’s flow.

Huh. Flow.

I construct.

I deconstruct.

I flow.

Awesome.

Alchemy of weight loss

Is it possible to use the principles of alchemy for weight loss?

After all, if any base material will do for transformation into gold, then my obese middle-aged body should do nicely.

But what I’ve learned about alchemy tells me that the actual transformation of the base material into gold can be done easily.

I just need a philosopher’s stone.

Well that sounds easy enough.

Where do I get a philosopher’s stone?

Ah, here we’re getting to the nub of the problem. I can’t buy a philosopher’s stone. I can’t borrow one from my neighbour. I have to make it myself.

Oh, and making that philosopher’s stone? All kinds of difficult.

Number one, because no instructions exist for making a philosopher’s stone. There are mysterious drawings. There are riddles. There are hermeticists that draw mysterious drawings and talk in riddles.

The thing about making a philosopher’s stone? It requires my effort. 

Much like the spiritual GPS of intuition, the map requires that I enter it before it interacts with me. The philospher’s stone will not create itself, or by following a step by step instruction manual that someone else put together. I have to discover it myself, using only clues and path markers left to me by other seekers.

One of my first alchemical clues instructs me to explore the relationship between things.

In relationship to the weight loss quest, I thought ”What is my relationship to heavy?”

My heaviness seems to come from problems avoided and problems that don’t have solutions.

I feel heavy-hearted. Weighed down. Burdened. Held back. Tied down and buttoned up. I have gravitas, the weight of the world on my shoulders.

I delay movement on these things because they feel so very heavy and the effort required to move them so very great.

I mistook these problems for me and internalized their weight. Because I don’t need to move the problems. I need to move myself in relation to the problems.

Then the weight dissolves.

But right now, the continuous delay of action, the cut off of an action aborted, has become like a calcified ball.

I have kidney stones of intent and action.

And they’re balling up the works.

Now, how to exchange kidney stones for a philosopher’s stone?

We ideally metabolize things, take things in, let them flow through.

I am hanging on to them and slowly poisoning myself.

So, to dissolve these balls of calcified action what options do I have?

I can start taking small actions. Choose movement over stasis more often. Learn to clear out my chakras. I can draw a clear separation between myself and these problems.

It will be like water dripping on a stone. It will over time wear the stone away. (Ooh. Note to self: drink more water.)

Eventually momentum will gather and things will move faster, easier, with less resistance and less weight. I will find the flow easier and stay in it longer.

Let me reframe my goal to lose weight.

I will learn to dissolve heaviness and discover lightness.

I will exchange gravity for levity.

As the bumper sticker says “Gravity sucks!”

Sending it back no more

I bowled on the weekend.

Oh, yes I did.

I very rarely go bowling. I find it kind of boring, and I want more bang for my buck you know? If I’m going to be physically active I want to burn more than 88 calories an hour. Plus it gives me a blister on my fourth finger which annoys me.

At any rate, in this particular game of bowling, I scored 202 points, which probably ranks as as my best bowling score. Ever. But that’s not the important part, because, as I may have already said, I don’t really care about bowling per se.

The important part? That score marks a shift in my patterns.

I bowled 6 strikes in that game. 4 of them in a row.

Please allow me to say that again, so I might glory in my achievement.

4 strikes in a row!

My typical pattern: at the moment when I could win, I send it back.

I muff my line. I stumble. I lose my focus. I pull back. I ‘forget’ that I know.

This Saturday, I kept what the universe gave me. I stayed in the flow. I did not send it back.  

I know very little about bowling techniques. This Saturday, I tried a new (to me) technique: I kept myself focused on the centre pin. I thought about the idea of looking where I wanted to go. I tried to think only of the pin. When the ball was coming off my hands I kept looking at the pin, gave no thought to the ball at all. Be the pin. And by God, it worked. And then, with the pressure of having the first strike, I sent another one down the lane. With the pressure of the second strike on me, I still sent a third strike down the lane. With the mounting pressure of the third I sent the fourth and final one down the lane. And then, the game was over.

A small thing in the great grand scheme of thing indeed. But a big example of how I do, can, and am rewriting patterns.

Because in that nano second before letting go of the ball, I could see the between of two possibilities. Two choices available to me. To succeed, however unlikely or to not succeed. To be honest, I felt pulled not to succeed. Like a gravitational pull. Break the streak. Go to the mean. Get back to realistic expectations. And this time, I chose to succeed. No wavering, buckling or folding. I found the zone and stayed in it.

Yay me!

But with that success, now, I see a lack of flow in my attempts to lose weight. I see a stuck. I see a story of the mean, the average, the typical.

You might say, I am not having the same success losing weight.

I lost 11.8 pounds. I’ve put 7.7 of those pounds back on.

I got into a small zone (losing about .5 a week) why did I retreat from success?

Same reasons as not get 4 strikes in a row I guess. The typical story: people gain weight. They stay heavy. They lose it with tremendous effort. They gain it back again, plus some. It’s unlikely that anyone can lose 65 lbs and keep it off. The transformation stories require Jillian Michaels yelling at you, the pressure of a television camera and celebrity endorsements, the grim reaper motivation of a critical illness. The pain and pleasure of a before and after picture. The story sucks me into its gravitational pull.

My story isn’t written yet and I find myself fearful of telling anything new. Just tell the typical story and that’s safer.

So, by using the bowling game as an example, I need to keep trying different techniques until I find one that gets me into the flow of losing weight. And then I need the courage to stay in that flow.

Is staying in the flow an oxymoron? Staying = static. Flow = dynamic. Perhaps I mean going with the flow.

If my previous experiences tell me anything, I probably already have the answer, but it will take looking off to the side and flapping around in the dark a little bit.

The answer often (always?) comes to me like a shade plant that can’t flourish or bloom in full sun. And you almost can’t look directly at it lest it vanish altogether.

How like a violet.

Intuition — Spiritual GPS?

I find I intuit better these days.

I sing a song and moments later it comes on to the radio. I go to a new cafeteria because I get a sense that a pattern wants to be changed, and discover the very person I needed to talk to eating lunch there. I ask a question to myself and an hour later I get the answer from someone outside myself.

It really feels as though I took one step into the universe and the universe is responding by coming three steps closer to me.

I hate the word universe to describe this thing. It sounds very woo-woo. Like a cop-out instead of saying ‘God’.

So, how else can I look at this great “It” ?

Let’s try this…

I’m standing on a map. I have an ‘X marks the spot’ place. I can think of this personal spiritual journey (proces, quest, adventure, wander) as moving towards the ‘X’. Using intuition feels like the ‘X’ moves closer to me. So, the ‘X’ didn’t move from its original spot geographically, it still is where it is. But I moved on the map because the map moved under my feet. I find myself in a different place because the map wanted me closer.

That works for me. I like the idea of a multi-dimensional map. A map that requires my participation but upon discovering me there interacts with me. Like a really really smart GPS of the spirit world.

I love intuition. Every time I experience it, I marvel and want more, more, MORE.

Invitation to interact: Intuition as GPS of the spirit. Is that what it feels like to you?