(This is Part 9 of a series. Go back to Part 8.)
Okay now, just for the fun of it, I'd like to encapsulate everything into a neat little phrase, something suitable for our fast-paced age, something that could be a good sound-byte on TV! Yes indeed, your faithful author is selling out to the final idiocy. Anyway, here it is:
Love everything as it is.
Of course that includes loving everybody as they are. In fact, the phrase almost was "Love everybody as they are". But that would have left everything else out: What about loving our situations? What about loving the contents of our minds?
Besides, Love everything as it is rolls off the tongue easier—always important—and anyway includes loving everybody as they are, so Love everything as it is ran off with the grand prize.
Let's take a practical example:
I was talking with a new friend today who is concerned about his future. He's a talented artist but is burned out on the artistry by which he made his living for so many years. Now he just feels tired, confused. To add to the situation, he's running out of money in just a few weeks.
He feels tired, worn out, he says, and feels tremendous anxiety. Yet at the same time I get that he desperately wants to be true to himself, to give himself a chance to live a fulfilling life.
What I suggested is that he attempt to find his passion, something for which he would really want to get up in the morning. When we have a passion, our situation isn't so important; it's just whatever it is. The important thing is that we can't wait to get out of bed in the morning to inside it.
For that I suggested that he ask himself a good question that would combine his passion and his need to make a living at the same time, such as "What is my calling? What is something I could be passionate about that would also be a good way to make my living?"
Then I suggested hanging out with that question, just hanging with it and letting the answer come of its own accord whenever it would, but in the meantime continuing to just hang with the question.
Second, I suggested that he see himself—as if on a screen—engaged in something that he felt passionate about. Since he wouldn't know what that was at first, he might imagine himself as if in a mist: He can't see yet exactly what he's engaged in, but he sees that he feels passionate and involved in it.
Third, I suggested that he recreate the feeling of what it was like when he was passionately involved with his artistry in the past. How do we recreate that feeling? We just do. We remember what it was like to feel that way and just recreate it and intensify it. We all innately know how to do this.
So far, so good. But that wasn't really getting at the deeper aspect of things, because in the meantime—as he pointed out—he was consumed by anxiety, insecurity, internal conflict. What to do about that?
(This is the end of Part 9. Go to Part 10.)
—jim sloman, 7.28.05
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