The Rolling Ball, Trust and Coffee

All of our actions, our thoughts, our reactions and our creative movements are in response to our environment, either perceived or real.

But our environment can be in our minds but not physically real.

If we believe something is real then our bodies react to the belief whether it’s real or not. So, I guess it’s real to us and so therefore it’s real to our bodies.

The amount of force coming towards us, or the lack of force coming towards us, is what we interact with every moment of every day. As we choose. We settle into a comfortable routine of expansion and rest, tension and release, weekly tasks, and then seek out or notice those events and people that bring the succession of experiences we’re looking for. Even the bad ones. Maybe not the horrific ones that come by evil or accident, but the ones we manage.

We start off as a small child who only notices those events that immediately impact us very close at hand. Our experience is about five feet around us, and we don’t have the ability yet to see things beyond the immediate environment. A child see “now” but hasn’t learned to see that a car might be coming down the street. They’re focused on the rolling ball and will run into the road to chase it.

We think of the rolling ball, money, relationships, pain, love, and as we grow and learn we can see that it’s okay to run for the ball but it helps to be aware of traffic at the same time.

We grow up physically along side others in our society, and play off of their “normal” speed of awareness and we function at whatever level we choose to settle into. Some of us stop changing and learning, and when the discontent of not expanding comes it’s drowned out by being busy, or by food, or the comfort of days off. Lots of ways to distract ourselves from having to expand and change our lives.

But life is yin and yang, expanding and maintaining, male/female, tension/release, light and dark. As we develop we see the bigger and bigger cycles and move with the path of least resistance along their roads. It’s not about dominating or controlling, it’s about respecting the experience and trusting the movement.

Not choosing is all part a choice: we’re free to choose no choice at all.

In order to move beyond what we’ve known we have to actually “see” ourselves there already, then we can notice the elements that will take us there and support us. The first step is entering the idea of what we want in our envelope of possible experiences, then to choose that one for ourselves. Once we think about it, then all the elements in our world start to shift to bring about the things we need to move into the new space. Or maybe they’re all already there, and we finally notice them, and come up with some ideas to bring it close.

Visualizing to create, and meditating to let go.

If our inner house is full of clutter then it’s hard to slow down long enough to create a good idea. We react to people and experiences coming at us in fear or in anger, when it’s probably best to stop interacting with the thoughts and people and places at all. We can’t win everyone’s opinion. We can’t control other people’s behaviour. Why try to control others by convincing them what to think, when we want to be free from others trying to control us?

It’s so hard not to win when you want someone to think your way, for their own good. That’s a funny game to play because even if you convince them, if their belief isn’t of their own choosing they’ll go back to what they thought originally. They need to or else they can’t grow properly. We all have to expand by working through our own stuff.

I think there’s more than just fight or flight as a reaction to people and events we’ve outgrown though.

The other reaction is to freeze. To not move at all.

The deer in the headlights, who has time to run if it could think clearly, but cannot seem to find its feet. The stimuli or person coming towards us is foreign or so beyond what we believe we can experience that we are frozen to respond. How can someone be so unkind? The envelope of ideas for what we should do next is empty. There’s no way to look within for the answer because there’s no options in there. We freeze. And unfortunately sometimes we’re hit by a truck.

It happens to the best of us and it’s a stage of growth. The fault for the unfortunate resulting mash up doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter. It becomes the experience where we learn that in order to move forward we have to trust someone.

Damn.

We go backwards in complexity to where things were working. Simple cycles. Very simple. Maybe as far back as just morning, afternoon, night. Days of the week. Sun rise and sunset. Tomorrow the sun will rise and I will make a coffee.

Maybe those things are trustworthy.

Then we move on to people. We have to trust people in order to grow. We need their help when there’s chaos, and we need to help them when they are in chaos.

And then a curious thing happens.

It dawns on us that we don’t have to surrender everything to someone in order to trust them. We can trust and share one part: an activity or a dream, or a business or just having a coffee. Trusting is about pieces of ourselves. Action A results in Action B over and over again. That’s what they mean about trust being earned.

It’s not about testing someone to see if they’re worth handing over everything to. Love and friendship don’t demand surrender. Love doesn’t demand anything. It doesn’t demand by obligation or any form of manipulation. You don’t have to do anything unless you want to, then you can offer if you want to. I trust that my favourite barista will pass me a coffee when I give her money. But I don’t trust her with my dreams and plans and family and music. We trust each other with talk of the weather or coffee or plans for the day, and we’re both happy. I don’t pour out sad stories on her. I don’t give her my life savings or my time.

Perhaps so many of us grow up feeling unsupported because we believe that in order to not be alone we have to surrender everything to everyone. Then when they don’t support us back we feel abandoned. Or angry. Or mistreated.

Be selective. We are all connected and share this world, but we shouldn’t give over everything we’re managing and cultivating, and ourselves, to everyone. They all don’t want to hear about your private lives and some want to steal your resources or energy. Manage yourself. Your thoughts and your body. Respect their freedom to choose. Find what parts you can trust with whom.

The ideas in your mind that you cultivate, whatever you think about, that is what will come towards you. Just like a magnet. It’s creating a magnetic field around you that draws in those experiences you’re imagining. Make something you want, not something you don’t want.

Think about what makes you happy, even if you’re not sure what the specifics are. Meditate to let go and be still. Then dream to create. I have a million ideas and a mind full of fantastic possibilities, so I’m learning to still my mind and let go of what I don’t need to manage any more, what I can either remove from my life, or let the world manage itself. Or trust others with.

Life is not all peace or all chaos. All peace is not good and all chaos is not bad.

We need both. Ambient peace underneath some chaos maybe. Yin and yang. It’s black with a dot of white or white with a dot of black. Swinging.

Meditate to let go and dream to fill the space with new things.

Then do what makes you happy when the ideas come.

There’s a little something to trust in.

Elaine