Sometimes I just want to take a day off from fixing myself, from practices and protocols that will enable me to become better or more . . . happier, healthier, wealthier . . . someone or something different . . . or more myself! What if I took a few hours off? Or even a few moments?
What if I take a break from the self-improvement project that dominates every day of my life? What if just for one day I don’t try to heal my past, or your past? How about I don’t try to learn something new; to figure something out; to manifest new things or experiences. How about I stop trying to replace what is here for something different?
What if I dare to allow the identity-shattering possibility that nothing is wrong, nothing is truly missing, and that my life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.
What might it be like to move through this day knowing that I am already fully connected? Perhaps there is nothing I need to learn, solve, understand or heal in order to navigate through the next few hours. Can I allow for the possibility that I might not need to improve this moment?
What might be the consequence of allowing for the revolutionary possibility that I have everything I need to fully participate in this sacred world, with all of its beauty, splendor, bewilderments, excruciating loneliness, hope and hopelessness, unmitigated joy, dejection and heartbreak?
I find it thrilling to allow this inner revolution, to submit to this possibility, to surrender my ego-maniacal need to control everything . . . for just a few moments. It is also quite disorienting. My mind is scrambling to find a problem to which it can anchor and around which to organize. The absolute spaciousness of being is something I have grown to defend against. It’s such an open experience here I find myself seeking the limitations, the resistances of embodied thought in order to know myself.
My mind contracts in response to so much space. Hold on now . . . isn’t there something wrong? I’m sure something is wrong! Surely something needs fixing, healing, shifting, or transforming; more growth, understanding, insight, or realization has to happen before I can show up entirely, in awe and gratitude, utterly committed to this life, as it is.
Try it. Experiment with me. Just for a few moments. Not to worry . . . You can come back to your problematic life at any time. You can attend to what must be fixed, healed, and so on. But for now, for just a minute, you can stop. Go outside. Look at the sky, the clouds, the trees. Stand in the grass, on the sand, on the muddy earth, go to the water, dive in. Feel your heart beating and your breath in your lungs. You are alive. You are here. I am alive and here with you!
Everything that has ever happened, everyone we have ever met has brought us to this moment. Love has come into this world of time and space as you and as me. Our lives, exactly as they are, the perfect expression of grace and the great mystery.
My breath is coming in and out now, regardless of my stories of good-enough or not good-enough. The earth supports my existence unconditionally; I am safely contained in my earth suit . . . I am not falling through space untethered. But the breath that lives me will be gone at some point, sooner than I’d like. So, I breathe deeply, now.
Breathe with me and attune to the miraculous spaciousness of life as it is. Let’s not postpone our participation here any longer by fixing or growing or transforming in the name of being worthy of some future liberation. We never know if we will be given another opportunity tomorrow to live today.
