February 10

HOPE MONTH: DAY 10: “You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.” ― Thomas Merton

When we are afraid or in pain, or angry, hurt, etc.; it is important to sit still. When we are jubilant, excited, happy, pleased, etc.; it is important to sit still. We must sit with discomfort or joy, with pain or with fear. We must sit with whatever is going on, so we can be present to it as it is unfolding.

What we have learned to do instead is create a story around it, based on Ego’s perception of what is happening to US. That is seldom the real truth of the event. There are about 1,000,000 other real perceptions being made about an event. We only choose to believe what our Ego tells us is going on; based on nothing other than our self-serving, self-centered view of the world.

Most of the time, we are going to pick up the thread of what we have historically been telling ourselves about life up to that point. We are either victims or heroes, saviors or martyrs, depending on our Ego’s way of presenting the story.

Usually, there is a much greater truth going on. Most of the time, it has little to do with us, if we can step away from the driver’s seat and Ego. Most of life is like that…it ain’t none of our business and it is NOT about us anyway. If we have a part, we usually see it wrong. So, it is better to adopt “not-knowing mind” and let it teach us what we are supposed to get from it and move on.

But Ego doesn’t like that. It wants to further the story we have been working on for so many years and make this another chapter in the ongoing saga of our lives. Ugh!

Boring, and ridiculous and self-centered. Yawn!

Again, I love the response: “So WHAT???” It is truly a freeing thing to ask myself, and I do, when I am in a fit and stable emotional place.

When I am, I can sit with my pain or my fear and ask it what it has for me to learn. If I cannot find an answer, I continue to sit and allow the feelings and remember all the times they have been there before. As Ego (SPM) is giving me a story, I unravel it to see if it is even true. So far, it never is. What I want to believe is always a really self-centered version of the truth. None of it really applies in the world around me. I ask to be removed of self and usually am. I keep asking until I can just sit still with the pain and the fear and not the story about it.

I have found that they do not exist for long when I really work with this. And then I have hope to recover from what I believe about all of it. That is what recovery is. Not that life changes to suit me, but that I can stop the BS story about what life is and how I am alone and different…which is the story Ego always tells anyway.