Now, now, now
You know how it is when you buy a red convertible you suddenly see red convertibles everywhere? Well that is how this whole spiritual gig is rolling out, I was in turmoil, someone handed me Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, then someone mentioned Ram Dass has been helpful to her (plus he’s funny) and so then a long-time source of mine who was laid off after 23 years sent me an article about Byron Katie, who is married to Stephen Mitchell, who translated my version of the Tao Te Ching, and each step of the way the message is growing louder to just leave the past behind and not worry about the future, the message keeps steering me back to be here now, be present in your life.
I thought of this while walking this morning and thinking back to those moments of pure joy that I’ve experienced which have all been when I have been the most present in my life and was able to observe each little detail around me in resounding technicolor – a night at Puccini’s coffee shop in 1990, while dancing in Istanbul in 2007, a moment on the beach this year, and one on a MS bike ride back in 2008. There are more to pull from, those times when there was no beginning or end just then.
What my source, now friend, forwarded me from Byron Katie was how she had distilled her life to four questions:
Is it true?
Can I absolutely know it’s true?
How do I react when I believe this thought?
Who would I be without the thought?
Afterward, when you have completely wrestled the thought to the ground, you replace it with a “turnaround”—an opposite thought, one that is “as true or truer” and that doesn’t cause you suffering.
I inadvertently did this exercise on the LaLa. 1) Is it true that I have to do everything in my power to maintain and not lose it? 2) How will I know if this is what I’m supposed to be doing or that all my hard work so far will come to fruition – how will I know if any of this is true? 3) I get uneasy because I don’t know if I am supposed to do this at any cost and if I have to do this at any cost, it is overwhelming. 4) Who would I be without it?
Now folks this is a house, right? But when you imbue into a non-living entity so much emotional weight it will eventually pull you down into the grave with it. The answer to the first question is no, hell no, there is nothing dictating that I am solely responsible for adhering to the dream of coming home to New Orleans and living in this house no matter what. The answer to the second question is that I don’t need anyone to tell me what to do, because they are not me and I have to do what makes sense for me and my family. The reaction to the third is that in thinking of letting go of the LaLa or of not maintaining it just so, I feel like a failure, much like I did at the break up of each of my marriages but at least now I realize that that’s okay. It’s okay to fail miserably at something you want to be so good at, so perfect at. And to answer the fourth is that I would be me, no matter what happened to the LaLa.
You know that mantra be careful what you wish for, you just might get it? Well, since my parents drug me around the world my whole life, I wanted nothing more than a house to call my own, with a family to call my own, where I could plant a garden and watch the memories of my life unfold. The problem with putting the finishing touches on anything you paint for the you you are going to become is that you leave out room for improvisation, for the introduction of a new color, for a change in light, in life.
Those damn vision of then, both before and ahead, they don’t serve you, no sir, they don’t serve you one iota.