A Small Slice of Summer Allowing

How good it feels to relax and let go.  To not be attached to time – even  psychological time.  Doing what you feel, when you feel it.  Sleeping, eating, resting.  Not pulled down by things having to be a certain way.  Not shaped within the confines of the structure of time, it lengthens.  The days last longer. It feels like it’s late afternoon and it’s only 1:30. 

I tune into the rhythms of nature, the leaves moving easily in the breeze.  The sun meandering its way through the trees. It feels a bit like my body systems are moving slower, too.  As if floating on the rise and fall of a wave, gently rolling.  I don’t seem to be striving for anything. 

Is it time now to shift gears? No, I’m in the same gear I was when I woke up.  When was that anyway?  As if I’m reclining on a comfy chair, with nowhere to be at any particular time.  Does it make me clearer or foggier?  I cannot yet say. I wonder what it will feel like when I leave this place?

Like lifting off your feet in water, trusting it to keep you afloat.  Allowing the breeze to touch your skin without cringing in cold. Suddenly all those things that were making me feel tight and constricted have flittered away like the butterflies from the Mexican Sunflowers.

The icy goodness of a cool, fruity beverage slides down my throat like a caterpillar through the grass. It eases the heat like bare feet through wet grass.

Things that once seemed so important are forgotten as I ponder the sunlight shifting or the flight path of the butterfly.  Everything seems far away and quiet.

Now I get up gently to get in the water, just ’cause I feel like it. There is something so freeing about the feel of the water supporting and surrounding me.  I lift off the bottom of the pool and I float, trusting.  I have a real sense of now. Being outside of time.  Without wanting or needing it to be any different than it is.

Space is the Place

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Spaciousness.  I’m finding that it impacts my life in many  areas.  For one thing, spaciousness means having the time to just breathe.  To spend some time just being, instead of always doing.  When life is spacious, there isn’t such a demand for multi-tasking.  It feels like I have more room when I only have to do one thing at a time.  When I can focus all my energy on what I’m doing, without a million distractions.  Those distractions suck up the space.  I suppose you could call multi-tasking an admirable trait.  But when you start adding more than 2 or 3 things, or you double and triple up repeatedly, you’re not really giving your best to anything.

An aspect of spaciousness is  being outside time.  Most of us are tied to the clock and what it tells us we must do.  I like not caring what time it is.  When you get in that zone, look up at the clock and cheer that you still have plenty of time to keep doing what you’re doing.  Man, that feels spacious to me!

Spaciousness permits room for sideline things:  an interesting email to read, a sweater that needs a button, a cluttered drawer asking for attention, a phone call from a good friend.

When there’s space you can breathe, you can spread your wings, express yourself  Sometimes, I don’t feel I have the space to write.  One of the beautiful things about writing is that you don’t need a lot of physical space or equipment. A lap, a clipboard, or a hard surface is usually enough.   A piece of paper and a pen or a laptop and you’re on your way. However, sometimes you need psychic space for the thoughts to well up and spill out.

It is one thing to be in an uncluttered space, free of distractions.  It’s another to have the open space in your head.  Wide, open spaces can be rare in our worlds.  But you can always generate that free, spacious feeling from within. 

I’m having fun finding and acknowledging those moments when I feel spacious.  As with most things, the more you notice, the more you discover.

Prosperity Pie

Review of SARK’s “Prosperity Pie: How to Relax about Money and Everything Else”

SARK is always so fun and easy to read.  Fun and Easy? That’s my theme for the year.  I would just love to do nothing but read SARK all year.  That would certainly be a fun and easy year! But for right now, it’s one at a time and Prosperity Pie is a good one.  Aren’t they all?

“Relief,” SARK says, “is not found in not working.  True relief is found in surrendering into work, whatever it is.”

Of course, SARK doesn’t want us to be unhappy in our work, unfulfilled. She talks about finding your True Work.  “True Work glows.”  I just love that.  My friend Lauren uses the term “hum.”  Works just as well.

SARK quotes liberally from Shakti Gawain’s seminal work, “Creative Visualization” to help us find our True Work.  SARK says, if you’re complaining about your work now, ask yourself, “What else could I do with that energy?” SARK has these things called micromovements.  Sort of like the small steps talked of elsewhere.  But she defines them as things that take five minutes or less. That’s really small!  She suggests we take one micromovement to locate or explore our True Work.  Put a date on it to create that heat.  There are other great ideas, like asking a friend to describe your True Work.  Fun and doable.  Another one is to describe what it feels like when you say, “I’ve found my True Work and I’m utterly happy!”

The challenge most of us face, according to SARK is “our reaction to work or no work” and “resistance to feeling what we feel.”  She asks us to welcome and allow our feelings.  They are the energy of motion.  E-motion.  SARK also wants us to relax about things.  Even if we can’t find work, she claims, “Work always surfaces.”  I am a testament to that!  What you need to find work is “Tall Courage, Deep Faith and Unshakable Certainty.”  Not so micro, that one.  But SARK says we can borrow hers.

The exercises throughout the book are part of a Discovery System. Discovery Systems for Work, Money and Teachers, among others.  These Discovery Systems give you a few thought-provoking questions to answer.  Some Reminders and a few Resources.

SARK is so utterly quotable.  Here’s one that struck me: “Divine Agitation is a good thing.”  What a wonderful way to look at life!  “Procrastination” she expounds, “gives us more time.”  Why, you know, it does.  “Perfectionism keeps you from being wrong.”  A shelter she calls it.  I have never thought if it that way!  Here’s one more: “See Time as a Choice.”  I love that!  Barbara Sher teaches that as well.  When you bust up time into small pieces you can make choices about what you want to do with it.

In the Money section, SARK talks about how everything we believe about money was learned, so we can change those beliefs.  “We’re so afraid of lack,” she says,” we turn away from learning systems and methods that could change that. Because we’re afraid they won’t work, we grasp tightly to previous systems.”  Even if they don’t work.  We need a new vision of money.  She asks us to identify areas around money that are “stuck, parched, unexplored, rigid and unclear.”  Also, areas that are “juicy, alive, supportive, unusual, creative and nourishing.” That’s one of the prettiest pictures of money I’ve ever seen.  SARK wants us to find new ways to play with money, as she teaches us to find ways to play with all of life!

In the Time section, SARK teaches us that time can shrink and expand.  “The Miracle of Time Stretcher.”  One of the questions she poses is “If time wasn’t a factor, what would you do/not do?”  Intriguing thought.

We are also asked to look at and seek out that which inspires us.  SARK, of course, has lots of inspiring moments.  “The more you welcome inspiriting people,” she says, “The more they will appear.” She also gets us to look at the other side.  Where are we inspiring others?  “Sharing inspiration multiplies it.”

All in all, another delightful and inspiring book from SARK.  For more, be sure to check out her web site at www.planetsark.com.  And remember to use colors liberally and always have fun!!