Flexibility. Searching for Experiment Opportunities.

 So, I've been going hard with planning and discipline and systems. It seems that now the universe is telling me to go thesis-antithesis-synthesis on this. Some quotes that have popped up:

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Abandon your plans, even the best ones"

"Lord, Thy will be done. Thou think of it."

"Relax, have Faith, Allow"

"Surrender, Trust, Accept"

Soooo.....

I'm easing up the reins a bit and trying to let the Silence within lead the way. While still remaining acutely active, dynamic, and focused. It requires much more skill and dedication to do it this way. Planning things out and creating systems and following rules is a way that we try and gain control and certainty in this very uncertain and uncontrollable world. Generally, when we give up on having that control, we end up going almost catatonic, like a child whose parents do everything for them, or a kitten that's been picked up by the scruff of its neck.

In the kitten's case, it's an adaptive behavior, and it stops as soon as it's not grabbed. With the kids, it often ends up as a maladaptive behavior that gets learned even when the kid isn't being helicoptered.

Similar to adults, it often ends up looking like depression and a lack of enthusiasm or even awareness of their own desire. Or sometimes a fear of it.

What the healthy version looks like is zest, playfulness, and flexibility, with a fine sensitivity to rightness or intuition, that allows an activity to be dropped mid-sentence, if it's no longer indicated. That's hard for our psycology to do, because of our impulse to complete things we've started, in addition to the general craving for comfort, familiarity, and control. I am no outsider to those cravings.

So, that's the lesson for this week.

In other exciting news, I'm at the point now where I'm mostly done navel gazing, ('mostly' means there's still some more time I want to spend going through my vision quest journals, for example.) and am ready to start getting some more experiences doing different kinds of work, some of the possibilities I've identified, to test if they are a good fit. The main puzzle at this point is finding opportunities to try out these different kinds of work. And to some extent, translating the things I think are good guesses, into actual concrete tasks/experiences.

That's all for now, though this is a week late so the next one may come soon.

Love!