I love the intimacy of your writing! And thank you for asking for advice. It allowed me to reflect on surrender and patience...
Perhaps surrender is a combination of skill and faith. Meditation, or letting go of thinking, sharpens the skill and loving reinforces the faith. Like loving everything, even the angry man honking his horn behind me. After saying eff you and your stupid truck I return to remembering the essence inside us all. There's a reason he's angry. Probably goes back a long way. This is the heart opening. It's quite nice and can even make you cry.
Regarding patience, I'm working on this as well. I often find myself rushing to write something instead of enjoying the process of writing. This becomes less so when writing with pen and paper, so I do that when I can. At a higher level, I've nurtured a faith in infinite time, or knowing I'm part of something bigger than myself. There is no rush to finish something. If it's important enough and I don't live to finish it, someone else will finish it. Or I'll pick it up in my next lifetime, in one way or another — if there is such a thing.
At another level, there's nothing to do and nothing that needs done. You do things for the joy of doing them. Everything else is taken care of. Things like deadlines become silly. When I scratched the surface of this level, I saw how trapped I was and the causes of my discontent. That said, we live in a time-based world so playing by some time-based rules is necessary unless you want to live in an ashram.
I love the intimacy of your writing! And thank you for asking for advice. It allowed me to reflect on surrender and patience...
Perhaps surrender is a combination of skill and faith. Meditation, or letting go of thinking, sharpens the skill and loving reinforces the faith. Like loving everything, even the angry man honking his horn behind me. After saying eff you and your stupid truck I return to remembering the essence inside us all. There's a reason he's angry. Probably goes back a long way. This is the heart opening. It's quite nice and can even make you cry.
Regarding patience, I'm working on this as well. I often find myself rushing to write something instead of enjoying the process of writing. This becomes less so when writing with pen and paper, so I do that when I can. At a higher level, I've nurtured a faith in infinite time, or knowing I'm part of something bigger than myself. There is no rush to finish something. If it's important enough and I don't live to finish it, someone else will finish it. Or I'll pick it up in my next lifetime, in one way or another — if there is such a thing.
At another level, there's nothing to do and nothing that needs done. You do things for the joy of doing them. Everything else is taken care of. Things like deadlines become silly. When I scratched the surface of this level, I saw how trapped I was and the causes of my discontent. That said, we live in a time-based world so playing by some time-based rules is necessary unless you want to live in an ashram.
Hope this helps!
Love the adventure + exploration, Izzy! Your reflections are always so real and authentic. This newsletter felt so warm :)