Last week, it felt like I was lying on a cloud, floating quite happily through life in some kind of slumber..
as i mostly do...
when suddenly ...
I was plucked out of it and thrown into a cauldron of fire!
You know that feeling when you're suddenly woken from a deep sleep?
That little moment of confusion, chaos, reactiveness...?!
Honestly...
no matter how much I practise, meditate, do all these things that supposedly make us less reactive, there are still moments when I think — *#%! if I am still this reactive with all my practices, what would I be like without them??
my reaction wasn't terrible.. but it wasn't exactly ideal...
So there I was, sitting in my cauldron, frazzled and frustrated...
partly mad that someone could come along and take away my comfort - boo me!
It's so unfair
& all of that!!
Then my most trusted human says to me...
"You know when you see a stray dog on the street, you jump into action. Buy it fancy food, try to take care of it & then think about it long after you've left it..?
well, you can do this one too."
And then....
"God gave you a task. Don't resist it"
And just like that, something shifted.
We are not religious in that sense, but we believe there are forces greater than ourselves, some kind of meaning or intelligence to life, call it what you like but there was something about that word in this moment...
**God gave you a task ** literally reframed my brain .. i think usually, i say, the universe but the word God seems to have a stronger energy
Anyway
Because if God gave me this task, then God also gave me all the gifts
& I can't spend the good times being grateful for everything life has given me — thank you, thank you, thank you, peace and love & aren't I blessed — and then, when something difficult arrives, decide that something has gone wrong.
That life is somehow broken because it isn't comfortable anymore...
familair?
But nothing has gone wrong!
Life is just happening
& perhaps my job is simply to meet what has arrived and do the task to the best of my ability
Lately, i have been thinking about gifts too;
we talk so much about being grateful for the gifts in our lives, but gifts require something from us as well.
We have to show up for them
Otherwise they just lie there, dormant, meaningless..
I've been watching this very closely through the lens of someone I love...
watching gifts being strewn along their path, literally laid at their feet...
love, opportunities, support.....
But even the greatest gifts are meaningless if we don't meet them
Maybe that is what life keeps asking of us
To show up in the best possible way we can,
for the gifts
& for the tasks...
I actually don't mind being woken from my slumber ..
The hardest part for me really isn't actually the task,
It's watching someone else struggle, knowing that I cannot remove their suffering
I know it isn't my responsibility — nor is it really in my power to walk somebody else's path for them
I am not the almighty after-all..
They have to walk it themselves.
All I can do is show up for my part of it as best as I can..
& along this way
wow... you cannot believe the friends i have....
there are no words to describe this kind of gesture
just crazy feels;
like a bursting heart, whole body tingles, a very quiet space that is so vast & so deep & so full
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