Life as it is. What are you waiting for? — Magnolias West
Part of my habitual programming has me judging my circumstances as wanting.
Most of the time it’s an unending chorus of “Not enough. Never enough.”
In case this isn’t clear, here’s one of the ugly voices that pipes up in my head on the reg: “Please give me what I don’t have. Preferably a lot. Preferably yours. And keep it coming. Forever.”
Yes, I have thinking like this. You do too, right?
Waiting for things to change before you can [fill in the blank] takes up a lot of your time and energy. Who has time to even consider taking action now, when there’s so much to do first?
Agonizing over what’s going on in your life and how to fix it takes a lot of your time.
Reconnect to your spark, to your desire to be seen, heard, and fully expressed.
When you’re worrying about what’s going on and what you should do to improve things, life’s more of a burden than an inspiration. Who has time for inspiration? Certainly not you, right? You need all the available time and energy you can summon to work on the endless project(s) of your life. Or so it seems.
Even when inspiration makes its way through, you end up talking yourself out of beginning something, or continuing it, or finishing it. You get in your way with endless arguments about how things have to change, how it’s too hard, and you’re too tired.
When you relax into Life As It Is — even just a little — you reconnect. To your spark, to your desire to be seen, heard, and fully expressed, that part of you that knows that there’s work you’re meant to do and things you’re meant to create, and yet you talk yourself out of them so easily you don’t even realize it.
Once you can see/hear/feel your spark, watch out! Even a tiny taste of what it feels like to go after something even when things are unresolved and scary is a big and beautiful game changer. When you step in an opening in your messy, imperfect, precious life just as it is and create something, your habitual grasp on misery might start to loosen and lighten up. You might have more fun. And inspire others as you go.
Imagine that.
What are you waiting for?
Waiting for things to change before you can take action — to change, or create, or begin — is a waste of your precious time.
When you embrace yourself as you are, and stop waiting for things to get better before you act, you bless and inspire the world with the gift of your chutzpah (bravery; ability to show up).
Embrace your beautiful life as it is now.
Join me on Sunday September 2nd, 12:30 pm. on Zoom. Registration required. Use this link right here.
I’ve been feeling into this season we’re in now (in the north). Harvest is happening. Feeling connected to the earth as the summer’s flames die down and the light recedes. In the Jewish calendar, we’re in the month of Elul, the month of “turn and return,” the ramp-up to the High Holidays.
I share this moment’s invitation with you: Let’s turn, and return, to the Divine spark that has brought us this far. Whether we know why or now.
The Divine — God, Goddess, Nature — has no need for you to wait. Not for the pounds to drop off. Or for the money to come in. Or to find love. Or to recover from physical ailments, scary diagnoses, and chronic conditions.
Simone Weil, in her book First and Last Notebooks (buy, library) said this:
“When suffering no matter what degree of pain, when almost the entire soul is inwardly crying ’Make it stop, I can bear no more,’ a part of the soul, even though it be an infinitesimally small part, should say: ‘I consent that this should continue throughout the whole of time, if the divine wisdom so ordains.’ The soul is then split in two. For the physically sentient part of the soul is — at least sometimes — unable to consent to pain. This splitting in two of the soul is a second pain, a spiritual one, and even sharper than the physical pain that causes it.”
Consider it. Consider your precious life. Consider your suffering(s). Consider them as a gift.
Instead of letting your challenges stop you, start! Instead of waiting to feel better, pick up what you’ve consigned to the pile that’s waiting for things to improve now. Pick up one. Shake it out. Lightly drape it over your shoulders. And begin.
Worrying about your life and what you should do to improve things gets in the way of inspiration.
You don’t have to do this alone.
First of all, bubbeleh (precious one), you’re never alone. You are wrapped in and made of Divine stuff that connects us all. Which is too easy to forget. And you’re probably quite skilled at that forgetting. Because in addition to the hard-wired spark inside us all, you also are factory equipped with the ability to think and worry yourself into agony early, often, and with so much skill that you forget you were ever content, creative, motivated, joyful, and productive in the first place.
Which makes having others to look at this with a real gift.
Join me in a series of conversations About Life As It Is. Register here for Sunday, September 2nd, and stay tuned for more calls as they get scheduled.
Let your light out. Let it shine. Now.
I’m Sue Kearney, seasoned and sage mentor, holding a lantern at the crossroads for women in the third third of life.
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Originally published at magnoliaswest.com on August 26, 2018.
