I have been sitting with several realizations this week. The practice of saying “Thy Will Be Done” and not thinking about what I want to achieve has been causing some shifts in my life.
I have also noticed over the past few weeks that I have begun to question some of my daily habits and things that I have believed for a while. It has helped me remove several more layers of complication I had added to my life.
Whew.
I have often been nudged towards inner work, but I thought that was a work of personal discipline to clear or program myself. This inner work was often done with the idea that it would help me work towards my goals or cause me to be a better person or magnetize me towards my life vision (that I dutifully wrote out and over and over for a period of time in my life).
Now, I’m confronted with a simple truth. None of it was needed. And, it was opening doors to negative encounters. I was misled by the appearance of self-help and the potential to help others. It is quite insidious. The more you get entangled in the world of doing things yourself, the more distorted things get. Your “educated” mind starts to consider reality in more complex terms than what is truly is.
I’m quite clear now that all I need is God and Jesus and to allow God to work through me. Everything else takes care of itself. Honestly, it is such a relief.
I’m not going to beat myself up for going off path. I’m sort of appreciative of the lessons and how I can see how insidious the enemy is. Most of us are taught to see blatant evil and reject it. I wasn’t expecting to be taken off course under the pretense of what I thought was growing spirtually.
I suppose I was fortunate. While I dipped my toes in a lot of things that seemingly empowered me, I never went too far in any direction before getting distracted or losing interest.
Here’s a quick list (there may be more I’m not thinking about, but these stand out):
Self-hypnosis and talking to “guides”
I became a Reiki II practitioner. I only practiced on a fellow student and a couple other people, though. I don’t know why I lost interest, but I did (maybe divine influence?).
Kriya yoga
I had a deck of tarot cards that I pulled out maybe one or twice every couple years. I had to look up the meaning of the cards in a book each time. I just threw them away.
I have several cool stones and crystals. I never took the time to learn and remember what they “healed” or helped with. I didn’t use them to do any kind of “work” because I think I had a sense that it was weird and maybe not the best ever. For now, I am keeping them because they make a nice rock collection.
Various meditations that focused on me instead of God
Being predominantly concerned with self-expression over allowing the divine plan to express itself through me
The thing is, most of the above can help you in your life. But, they are all about our individual wills. Each of us gets to make a choice. Your will or God’s will.
I choose God.
This past week I have been contemplating how this changes my life at the moment. For one, I feel like I have to make a practice of being present to God more and enhancing my ability to discern His will. For another, I am already seeing that what I create may change.
It’s kinda fun. I’m interested to see what God has in store for me.
I have been observing an interesting occurrence in my life: I will often conclude that I should do something or try something after a long time of avoiding it. Then, that thing turns out to be what I should have been doing all along or I should have done when it first became apparent to me.
Why am I like this?
It’s one of those funny-not-funny sort of things. In hindsight, I wish I had taken the nudged-actions sooner, AND, I recognize that my mindset was not where it needed to be until it was.
To me, this has a humbling effect. I usually have exhausted my “figuring stuff out” capabilities before I am open to doing the things that I have been resisting. Then, life rolls smoothly until I starting figuring again and create resistance to what actually would keep me flowing along in the way that I enjoy flowing along.
I truly make things harder than they need to be sometimes.
After writing that, my mind automatically goes into trying to figure out to reduce my “stubborn” moments.
The thing is, I don’t think this is something for me to figure out. I think it is something to let go of – to surrender to.
The statement “thy will be done” is becoming my mantra more and more often. It is freeing in that it reminds me that I don’t have to figure everything out and I can get to a place of being humble more quickly. It is actually a refreshing position to operate from.
So, not only am I giving any stress or anxiety (or whatever) to God, but I am doing my best to allow whatever my part is in the divine plan to unfold without trying to assert what I think my part is.
That is all I got for this week, but it is a biggie. If you know, you know.
I like to think of myself as an efficient person. Once I’ve done something a few times, my mind naturally works out ways to streamline the process and get it done better and faster. Maybe most people are like this?
Somewhere along the way I have somehow developed an urgency to getting things done quickly. But, I don’t know why. Is it so I can sit around and do nothing or watch Netflix? Or, so I can do even more stuff?
Well, that mode of being can suck an elf (this is a The Tenth Kingdom book reference and not intended to be as inappropriate as it sounds – I think).
I remember when I became a raw foodist and making meals took a lot of preparation. Some things needed to soak for a while. I might have to dehydrate a snack for a day or two. I felt like I was washing dishes constantly. However, I did it all with a smile because I knew I was making choices that were going to benefit my health. It felt great. I’ve definitely lost some of that patience over the past decade.
I notice that sometimes I am annoyed at having to do mundane tasks. When I notice the annoyance, I instantly stop in my tracks and poke myself in the chest, and say, “Hey, girl… Don’t you love being able to live this life? Aren’t you grateful for the opportunity to be of service to yourself and others?” I always say yes, even if it might come off a little whiny. “Well, get it on with it.”
The thing is that there is joy in toil. I feel like we’ve been trained to think getting to a place where you can relax and do “nothing” is the goal. And, rest is necessary and I’m not trying to say that people should be work-a-holics by any means.
What I am saying is that we should slow down, be present, and enjoy all the things of life – even if they aren’t things that we particularly want to do.
I don’t want to tell anyone else what to do, of course, but that is what I am working at.
I can’t say I love cleaning the house, but I love that I have a house and that it is easily manageable for me. I don’t always love cooking whole food meals (often lots of steps and lots of dishes to wash), but I love feeling that what we are eating is nourishing us better than eating out.
I’m always surprised when I round a bend in my spiral upwards and realize that I was not quite as advanced as I thought I was (I really shouldn’t be surprised, though).
I think of it like changing the algorithm of my non-digital life. As I move forward and shift my awareness, new things show up in my life in the same way that new things show up in my social media feeds these days (though I try not to spend much time there).
I expect things to get more and more interesting. 😊
One of the perks of growing up LDS, was the concept of the Word of Wisdom and the idea that the body is a temple. The Word of Wisdom gives some guidelines around food. I personally haven’t found all of its suggestions to be completely accurate (such as more grains, less meat), but it instilled a thought process around what I consumed. It’s one of the reasons I was never really interested in drugs or alcohol.
I remember realizing as a teenager that we probably shouldn’t be drinking caffeine (in our house, Pepsi), and I requested that my mom start buying me Sprite. The adult-me finds this incredibly amusing – as if any high sugar content soda was a good option. But, making a choice that was different from what the rest of my family was doing was significant.
In my family, I’ve often been considered a little different. My dad would introduce me as the “weird” one. I suppose I read unusual things and wrote strange stories. My imagination has traditionally been a little “out-there.” One time my mom gave me permission to paint a mural on my bedroom wall and I draft-painted it (never finished it) and it apparently gave my younger sister nightmares. (How to describe it? On the right was the top part of a humanoid figure with long, flowing hair and a head with a dandelion growing out of it. The face was painted to look like bark with no other features. The body flowed down to become a rock facing – like the edge of a cliff. The left side of the mural was a wave forming and heading towards the rock facing. I only got as far as mapping it out in white – with the bark of the face in browns and the dandelion in whites and yellows. So, yeah, nightmares may have been appropriate. Sorry, Spink!)
Anyway, I was pretty accustomed to not being like everyone else around me when I became a raw foodist in my thirties. My whole life changed during that time. I moved to North Carolina. I would drive to the Mt. Vernon Springs in Pittsboro every two weeks and collect enough spring water to last me around two weeks. I got a juicer, a Blendtec, a 9-tray Excalibur dehydrator, a food processor. I grew sprouts to eat. I fermented cabbage. I tried a whole bunch of raw recipes – some good and some disgusting.
Admittedly, it was a little extreme.
I ate 100% raw for nine months. It helped reset my body in a way I couldn’t have imagined. Everything normalized (my cholesterol had been rising, weight loss, etc.). Maybe I would have done it longer, but I found myself missing out on some shared experiences with people that centered around sharing food. So, I adapted. It actually did my muscle mass a lot of good.
I tried experimenting with raw food again in 2012 for a few months. I also have a few recipes that I still like to have every now and then (mostly desserts like raw banana ice cream, raw brownies and cookies made of nuts and dates and such).
I don’t really have an interest in going that extreme with my eating habits again, but I do feel pulled to do some things differently.
My husband and I mostly prepare our food ourselves from whole ingredients. We’ve been making our own kombucha for years. I was thinking, though, that maybe it is time to start growing sprouts again. Perhaps I can add fermented cabbage to my weekly food prep.
I have had a sourdough starter going since late last year. My husband likes to eat bread and I think me making it from a fermented source is probably a better option. I eat it, too, but only from Thursday to Sunday. It may sound a bit odd, but it is part of my latest experiment: I fast from dinner on Sunday to dinner on Monday. I then eat a paleo-style diet on Tuesday and Wednesday. Then Thursday to Sunday, I don’t have any rules (but we still eat pretty well, regardless).
I’ve been following that pattern for the past month or so. It’s going pretty well. Still, I might change up as the seasons change. I love trying new ways of doing things to find what might work better.
Why am I being unusually focused on my diet?
Ideally, I would love to reach a place in my development where I could consciously adjust the chemicals in my body for optimal performance and energy with just my will and intent. I do believe that is possible. I do believe there are yogis and monks that can do this already. I’m not there yet.
So, I keep experimenting. It’s fun for me. I thought I would share since it is the dominant thing on my mind this week.
In an ideal scenario, I would be growing more of my own food as well. In time, my friends. In time. 🙂
This past week I have had a mindset of openness. I have been thinking of all my actions as if they are opening doors to whatever the next phase that my life is expanding into.
That said, I have been bouncing around between different things in a way in alignment with the flow I described in last week’s post. It has been interesting to see where I am led and what I have gotten accomplished. I’m feeling pretty good about all that. Even when unplanned things pop up (had to make a last-minute cake-topper for my paren’ts 50th anniversary-which turned out super cute, btw!), I just relax into it and get it done.
I like this way of being. I don’t feel urgency in a stressful way. Instead, I feel excitement about what I get to create.
One cool side effect is that I have been imagining new possibilities to work into my revision of The AI Anomaly. It still has a ways to go before being ready to release, but I’m too excited about it to not get it done.
Other than that, I feel some side quests calling to me from my closet of crafty things. This fuel for my creative spirit is primed and ready for ignition. I see taking the time to learn and play as a door opening, too.
