“What others are doing around you seems very important when you have not found your own steadiness. You want to say to them, “Don’t rock my boat! If you rock my boat, I can’t be steady.” But the truth is you’re the only boat-rocker in your world. Only you can rock your boat.” – Esther Hicks
I read something recently that said when we are focusing our own energy outside of ourselves, it’s like our energy becomes a desperate scavenger, wildly looking for somewhere to land and to feel steady and full. Scavengers are always on the hunt, wildly searching for the next carcass to fill them up. It’s an exhausting way to live, trying to make everyone and everything else stay on their even keel, so that you can feel steady. It never works, but it doesn’t stop us from trying, does it?
I wish I had a dollar for every time I said to myself, “Once everything is perfect at home i.e. once all house projects are completed to my utmost satisfaction, once everyone I love has no health problems or job concerns or relationship worries, once we have just the right amount of money in savings, once all of our vacations/celebrations are planned and then said vacations/celebrations are executed happily and successfully with pictures to prove it, once my dogs are as well-behaved as that guy’s dogs in the neighborhood whose beautiful dogs act like an extension of him without even wearing leashes, once everyone accepts that the pandemic is under control and we no longer have to wear the stifling masks, etc. etc. etc. . . . In short once everything outside of myself is just plain “easy peasy” (but not too easy that I feel bored), then I can sit back and feel good.”
If I had a dollar for every time that I put conditions on my own happiness, at least my money security issues would never be a concern for the rest of my life. Why do we make it so hard to allow ourselves to feel good all of the time? Isn’t feeling good and peaceful and tranquil our birthright? Isn’t this pure steadiness what we really are, at our deepest cores? If our souls are the energy of Love and our souls are with us all of the time, why do we put blinders on to that fact? Why do we scavenge outside of ourselves for the very Love and Peace and Tranquility and Knowingness that is with us all of the time, if we just take the time to sit still enough, to fully realize and marinate in this fact? We give ourselves glimpse of our souls when we pray or when we meditate or when we savor the very moment we are in, without having to change anything about it. Why do we rob ourselves of living in this bliss, on a regular basis? Why do we spend so much of our time, sending out our energy to scour around in the past, or to scavenge desperately in the future? Why do we constantly rock the boat, when it is our natural state to keep it steady??
“Mindfulness isn’t difficult, we just need to remember to do it.” – Sharon Salzberg
“When you are here and now, sitting totally, not jumping ahead, the miracle has happened. To be in the moment, is the miracle.” – Osho
“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward other land. There is no other land. There is no other life but this. ” – Henry David Thoreau
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.