~Alan Watts
I might have used this quote before, but it touches me now, so I'm using it again.
Michael and I spend a lot of time in each others company. We talk about travel, diet, yoga, religion and everything beyond and between.
However, when I talk about religion, I tend to wax on about the negative ways in which it has affected my life.
"What are your favorite parts of the Bible?" Michael tried to draw out the positive after my bitter comments regarding the merciful nature of Yahweh.
"Well... " I struggled to dredge out a positive -- not because the Bible isn't chocked full of an abundance of beautiful words and ideas -- I just haven't spent a lot of time thinking about them lately.
"Umm... I like the part where Jesus says, "let he who has sinned cast the first stone." I think that organized religion tends to create groups of people. Righteous, god fearing folk and hell-bound heathens. When Jesus used these words to save the prostitute from being stoned to death, he put everyone on the same playing field. One of the most destructive things about religion is that people can use it to dehumanize others. In this verse, it's like Jesus is saying, "we are all human. We are all flawed and should probably refrain from killing each other for our flaws.""
Thursday was my day off. Hannah dropped me in Ilfracombe and I took the coastal path back, walking slowly, absorbing the sounds and sights of spring and exploring the manual setting of my camera.
The path was blanketed with a soft mist. It was a gentle, restorative, enveloping mist that helped me to forget the beetroot contaminated juice and the general stress of living under the same roof as someone who requires a very specific sort of perfection from every task.
Moving quietly, thoughtfully, observantly through the mist, another loved Bible verse sprung to mind.
Matthew 6:28. I love Matthew 6:28-30.
“So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; 29 and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?"
I'm at a place in my life where letting go of plans feels natural. I understand that circumstances change, priorities shift, and I know not to take fluctuating circumstances and priorities personally.
You may be able to let go of plans, but you still spend SO much time planning. Dreaming. It's a guilty pleasure that takes you out of the moment. Your next step, I thought as I gazed down the foggy trail, is to not plan at all. To live life like a lily of the field.
Letting go of planning altogether rubs me the wrong way for these reasons:
a) it feels lazy. Like I'm letting the universe do all the work for me.
"Hey there, Universe. I know you've already got a plate/world full of chaos, but would you like a side of my delicious problems as well? I'm just gonna bum around town and get a latte or something. I'll be back to check on your progress in a couple of hours or so. Cheers!"
b) I don't really believe in having "faith". This also feels lazy (I'm rather adverse to laziness, in case you hadn't noticed). Like I'm not willing to think things through or search out answers myself, so I sit back and say, "just have faith -- it'll all work out."
"Ummm.... I don't know if I'll be able to afford a bus ticket or new contact lenses or boots that keep my feet warm or proper travel insurance or food or..." Faced with these issues, it seems like a cop out to think "The Universe will take care of me," instead of "I'll spend a month teaching in Croatia and try to get in some working hours when I'm in Colorado this October and make sure to visit the dentist when -- "
c) I don't feel important enough for the universe to be aware of my needs and to meet them without me striving, yearning, planning for them.
"Mr. Universe? Yeah, look, I know you're a busy guy and all, but could you please get cracking on this trip to Mexico City thing? I've been thinking positively for weeks now and feel like more ought to be happening on your end. With all due respect and everything."
In my little proactive mind, living without a plan is similar to viewing this intricate, haphazard life like it's one big Christmas Eve. Send your requests to Santa and hope that if you leave enough milk and cookies out and you've been extra good this year, he'll deliver the bike you so kindly requested and dump the coal in the stocking of someone else.
But why do I really plan?
I plan because I'm afraid.
Afraid of a future that doesn't exist.
Afraid of experiencing again and again the pain from my past -- which only exists in how I choose to let it affect me now. My past pain sticks solely because I allow it to breathe life into my present.
I'd rather live an open life free of fear than live a closed life full of plans.
I'd rather live like a lily of the field than an ant digging tunnels underground. Doing the same task day after day after day until it dies.
Vanity made me heavy.
Planning from a place of fear makes me... reactive. Planning from a place of fear is done to avoid the bad rather than to receive the good.
Allow yourself to live softly, I gazed back at Hele Beach through the comforting grey. Begin by softening the edges around your dreams.
I sketched a flower with roots floating over the ocean when Harriet, Michael and I sat around the living room table and drew our destinies on Friday morning. It felt both cliché and bizarre, but I've decided to embrace this month of weirdness and learn from it what I can.
If embracing weirdness includes drawing destinies, so be it.
If it also includes answering questions such as --
"I just saw you swallow an emotion, Aimee. What was that emotion you just swallowed?"
-- so be it.
Yesterday's weirdness also included randomly reaching into a box of vials filled with flower essences, placing a drop of the extract under our tongues and reading an excerpt of what the flower had to say about us.
I drew Sweet Chestnut. According to "Bach Flower Therapy", this flower is "connected to the principle of release. The negative Sweet Chestnut state is the moment when the personality is completely on its own, back to the wall. One hangs in empty space, like a parachutist who has pulled the rip cord a dozen times, to no avail. The negative Sweet Chestnut state is the moment of truth, the extreme confrontation of the personality with itself. Sweet Chestnut is often the Guardian of the Threshold at the beginning of genuine spiritual development. The human being learns what it really means to be lonely, understanding that only by thus being totally thrown back upon oneself can the way open up to another level of consciousness or to God. One realizes that everything is taken from one because one needs to go forward empty handed if one is to be able to take hold of the new life that is coming towards one; that one has to give oneself up completely to be totally reborn."
Empty handed, Bourget. You've found openness in your life. Now it's time to leave behind your fear of emptiness.
Lovely photos in this one Aimee. I would love the hike the coastal trails of this area, and your photos make me think spring would be a great time to do it.
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