Is it solipsistic in here, or is it just me?
I have a dear friend, Audrey, with whom I have an email relationship. We live too far apart to actually spend face time together, and we’re at different stages of our lives with different priorities. We met in our 20’s and formed a bond that has survived two divorces and five kids and moving far apart. And so we maintain that bond via email. We are both very interested in self-awareness and that is often the subject of our emails. I wanted to share this one I sent to her today. It’s unedited, so just pretend that you are my dear friend, and I’m sending it to you…
___________________________________________________________________________
My day has started wonderfully. I am going to live my life the way I need to right now – self-care being the priority. I want to nurture my relationships, enjoy my work , and take care of myself, not necessarily in that order. I have read a couple of things that really opened up my mind recently. I think I mentioned the part of A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle that gave me an aha moment: when he said (and I’m paraphrasing a lot): “we are not our stuff (our physical bodies), we are the space around the stuff”. You’ve read this, yes? I just finished What God Wants by Neale Donald Walsch. Fascinating book and very much in line with my spiritual beliefs. The aha moment I had in this book (since I already agree with his ideas about a spiritual God) was when he said that people look for external experiences to generate feelings. It’s not the activity that is the end result. We do “whatever” because it invokes a feeling in us and that’s the experience we want. I found that fascinating. He goes on to say that (because God is us and we are God aka lifeforce aka universe aka energy – we are absolute, pure potential) we have the ability to manifest any feeling we want in ourselves without the external stimulus. And he’s absolutely right. I can close my eyes, and I can visualize how I feel when, for example, I’m at an action movie, and I can experience those feelings. This goes hand in hand with the belief that when we affirm, our subconscious does not know the difference between what’s real and what isn’t. All of this made me realize we are using our physical bodies simply as the instrument through which to experience stimuli which then induces the desired feeling. It made me realize I am so much more than my body. Being a results-oriented person, it has been difficult for me to separate ”me” from my body. It is simply the instrument through which I accomplish everything. It has been a challenge for me to see that I really am a spiritual being having a physical experience, rather than a physical human having occasional spiritual thoughts and experiences. That is a huge paradigm shift for me. And it gives me great comfort. It makes me feel substantial and powerful, and not dependent on, or limited by, my physicality.
At the same time, I realize the value of having a healthy vessel through which to work to achieve my highest self – which is what I think we’re all here for. Thus the focus on self-care. I realized yesterday that if my life up to this point were to be compared with an airliner which lost cabin pressure, I have been running around making sure everyone else’s oxygen mask is on, ignoring my own decline. Time to put my own damn mask on!
To that end, as today is the first day of the rest of my life, I woke after 8 hours of sleep (only interrupted once by our yowling cat parading around my room – I didn’t lock it in the laundry room because my son has been sleeping in the rec room and being so sick, needed his sleep). I stretched, had my juice and vitamins while I let the dog out, and then I went for a 30 min walk around the pond. Wanting to be an observer of my own life as part of this journey of self-care, I took note that I started out the walk thinking “I need to get this done so I can move on to the next self-care activity!” and then stopped myself…..
Oh, the other thing (I knew there was something else) I read in this book was that we really only do have the current moment in which to live – we have to live in the now. I already knew that. But, he said it doesn’t matter what do you DO in the current moment, it matters how you FEEL. I am such a “doer” that this is a completely different way of thinking for me, and a little overwhelming. K, back to my morning….
…I stopped myself from simply “accomplishing” my walk and switched my mindset to “enjoying and being present in” my walk. And I enjoyed it tremendously. I felt relaxed and happy.
I can see that being aware and mindful of my choices, and taking care of myself is going to take a lot of time and effort. And I guess that’s also why it’s easier just to maintain the status quo, even if we’re not progressing
———————————————————————————————-
That’s enough philosphy for now, dear reader, because it’s (Canadian) Thanksgiving, and it’s time to make some food to share with my family. Happy Thanksgiving to you all. Let’s count our blessings and celebrate life, love, and family.