I've been away for a while, and I'm just going to silent retreat on that.
But hi.
Anyway, it's 2012 now and everyone is doing their New Year resolutions, goals, intention settings etc. My favourite ones are around invoking an intention, quality or essence, a word, a star to steer by.
I have been invoking the quality of ‘humility’. A word, like ‘surrender’, which I’ve really struggled to understand – why does this come up for me? It’s quite counter-cultural of course. (Ha! Which probably helps me believe that there’s probably something good in it!!!)
Here’s what I have found in the idea of humility.
[+ service]
[+ surrender]
[+ 'I don't know' mind]
[+ receptivity]
[+ curiosity]
[+ possibility]
[+ commitment]
[+ liberty]
If I want [whatever] to grow and thrive in the world and [whatever] needs [this], then how I feel about delivering [this] is IRRELEVANT to the fact that [this] is what [whatever] needs.
My child is his own self. My job is to get to know him and meet his needs as best I can so he can grow and thrive in the world.
My mission from god is it’s own self. My job is to get to know it and meet its needs as best I can so it can grow and thrive in the world.
I myself am who I am. My job is to get to know me and meet myself as best I can so I can grow and thrive in the world.
Midwifing. Garden tending. Lantern keeping. I have lots of metaphors. They are all around humble, dedicated service. Obviously the most important lantern I am keeping is my self. Not for the SAKE of the lantern, my physical small-s ego self, for the sake of the LIGHT. Humble surrendering to whatever needs to be done so that the light can shine most clearly, steadily, brightly.
Happily, paying attention to what the lantern needs and delivering it places my physical small-s ego self in a life that is most enjoyable and happy. But that’s a side benefit.
Ego-driven STRIVING for happiness just ends up in loops of chocolate, spendthrifting, procrastination tv, sleeping in, staying up late, self-harm, depression, anxiety, certificates, fabulous business cards with my name on them, lots of external EVIDENCE that I’m okay…. None of it satisfying.
Humility makes room for midwife-me, lantern-keeper me to ask curious questions around those ego-driven desires and impulses. Hello ego – why do you think you need [chocolate]? Is that true? What is the essence of the want? Is there a more powerful way I can deliver that quality than through [chocolate]?
MMmmmmmmm, humility. Humble like the one-L Lama. Me and the Dalai Lama, we’re tripping the humility shtick together. I should probably read an Intro to Buddhism book I think…
Anyway, it struck me a couple of days ago that the opposite (and therefore, yin-yang like, ESSENCE) of humility is INFINITY.
The infinity sign. The mobius strip. The endless spirals, like in shiva nata, like in life, coming back to where we began and knowing it for the first time. Over and over and over again for ever for ever that is what life is.
Which means….. every point on that mobius strip is OKAY, every point I find myself on my joooourney along and around the infinity sign of my life, (oh hello ISSUE you’re still here but we are different now) (hello PATTERN we’re back where we started but we are different now), is OKAY. It’s PART of it. Obviously – because infinity contains, er, everything!
Being lost for months in horrible paralysing depression is OKAY because it’s PART of the infinite experience. A dark, painful part, but a part, a legitimate, important, perfect part of it. And IIIIII got to experience it. There is a grace in that that is hard to explain.
So I have nothing to fear. NOTHING. How…. light ….that feels! How spacious, and free.
Epiphanies are stoopid when you try to wrap them up in imperfect words.
Nonetheless.
Humility. Infinity. They are the same thing.
And those are the qualities I’m consciously bringing with me on my voyage into the now.
