8/30: An Industrious Girl
One of my great teachers sent out her quarterly newsletter the other day, and in it she recommended a little exercise for the new year:
Consider in a playful and loving way what symbol or image arises when you imagine being YOU, fully and completely. When you are expanded and unlimited, joyful and brilliant, ask, "When I am my True Self, I am like...?" Notice what comes to mind. It could be a feeling, a word or a metaphor.
She provided an example from one of her clients, who discovered in herself "a Guardian, a Healer, an Architect."
That's me in the back, figuring out wet sand.
So I put on some binaural beats tones, set my fingers on the keyboard, got into as much of an expanded and unlimited state as the day allowed, and took down the images that arose.
From earliest toddlerhood to about age eleven, there I was: totally engrossed...in something. All kinds of things. Making stuff--art, crafts, food, clothes, music, stories. Solving problems. Figuring things out.
And then moving on--over and over and over now for almost sixty years. Being super-industrious, but--and here's the key--never terribly productive.
From the session:
The building blocks are constantly rearranged. THIS IS WHO I AM THIS IS WHO YOU ARE changing structure, rearranging, the Calder mobile of your mind, the heart and eyes totally focused on this thing, this thing right there, this moment, this now, this interesting problem.
You're not who you've tried to be. Let it all go. Everything but this. This right here, whatever it is, whatever makes your eyes focus and your cat-ears tilt forward and your whole being come into slow, steady, absolute focus: that's all that counts. That's all you are.
AS SOON AS YOU ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING YOU'RE DONE WITH IT. DON'T KEEP TRYING TO GO BACK TO IT. THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IS THIS FEELING HERE.
Some of my favorite people worry about their fickleness, about not really accomplishing anything in life; about spending all that money on some passion only to solve its mysteries and move guiltily on (often storing up the old tools and supplies for years out of some false hope that we'll "get back to that someday").
In this little exercise--which was as much about letting go of what isn't as about embracing what is--I finally began to accept that I'm just An Industrious Girl. Not productive, not "successful," not goal-oriented. Just happy to be engrossed in something, busily working away.
It's okay that the only result is me having fun.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth, where there are
comments.
Consider in a playful and loving way what symbol or image arises when you imagine being YOU, fully and completely. When you are expanded and unlimited, joyful and brilliant, ask, "When I am my True Self, I am like...?" Notice what comes to mind. It could be a feeling, a word or a metaphor.
She provided an example from one of her clients, who discovered in herself "a Guardian, a Healer, an Architect."
That's me in the back, figuring out wet sand.
So I put on some binaural beats tones, set my fingers on the keyboard, got into as much of an expanded and unlimited state as the day allowed, and took down the images that arose.
From earliest toddlerhood to about age eleven, there I was: totally engrossed...in something. All kinds of things. Making stuff--art, crafts, food, clothes, music, stories. Solving problems. Figuring things out.
And then moving on--over and over and over now for almost sixty years. Being super-industrious, but--and here's the key--never terribly productive.
From the session:
The building blocks are constantly rearranged. THIS IS WHO I AM THIS IS WHO YOU ARE changing structure, rearranging, the Calder mobile of your mind, the heart and eyes totally focused on this thing, this thing right there, this moment, this now, this interesting problem.
You're not who you've tried to be. Let it all go. Everything but this. This right here, whatever it is, whatever makes your eyes focus and your cat-ears tilt forward and your whole being come into slow, steady, absolute focus: that's all that counts. That's all you are.
AS SOON AS YOU ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING YOU'RE DONE WITH IT. DON'T KEEP TRYING TO GO BACK TO IT. THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IS THIS FEELING HERE.
Some of my favorite people worry about their fickleness, about not really accomplishing anything in life; about spending all that money on some passion only to solve its mysteries and move guiltily on (often storing up the old tools and supplies for years out of some false hope that we'll "get back to that someday").
In this little exercise--which was as much about letting go of what isn't as about embracing what is--I finally began to accept that I'm just An Industrious Girl. Not productive, not "successful," not goal-oriented. Just happy to be engrossed in something, busily working away.
It's okay that the only result is me having fun.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth, where there are
comments.