Marianne Williamson

A Year Off.

by Rebirth Your Life

imagesSince 2002 I have been travelling somewhere abroad every 2 months and during 2011/12 every month, so I decided in May 2012, hitting 65, that I would take time out for review and I am still in it, coasting toward March 2013. One thing I have learnt is that the universe knows best, or as Marianne Williamson wrote in A RETURN TO LOVE : “God’s plan works – yours doesn’t.

In June last year I started twice weekly BOXERCISE with a Home Personal Trainer to get back some stamina then in August was told I had first stage skin cancer and went on twice daily chemo for 3 weeks. Deeply unpleasant ( but successful ), and handy that I was already in an exercise pattern. Yes, some patterns ARE useful. But more importantly it verified my first paragraph above.

So having cancelled all the planned seminars for 2013, I just waited, rested and waited. 

I just posted a blog on one of my other sites, which is rather apt for here to keep you in the loop . . . AND I’m having a wonderful break, off to Marrakech next week, my spiritual home. Still waiting, still resting.

_____________________________________________________

Hopefully I’m back with a rhythm. It’s been an interesting calming four months deciding what to do next, when the ego insists you MUST be doing something instead of watching ‘Flog it’ in the afternoon.

flogit_home_203x152I thoroughly enjoy ‘Flog it’ especially when they ask ” what are you going to do with the money? “. The money is usually about 80 quid and they put it toward a cruise or a trip to Australia. I can’t wait for someone to say ” it’s paying my electricity bill because of this bastard government and their free-market chums “. Years ago, during the last recession in the late 80’s ( under the Tories I might add ) I was wandering in Watkins, London’s oldest esoteric bookshop in Cecil Court, off Charing Cross Road where I found a little booklet called ‘Life was never meant to be a struggle’ by Stuart Wilde.

It changed my life. Literally. From that point on I refused to struggle and pointed this out to the assistants at Watkins on many future visits, so much so that they amended my mailing list address to ‘I don’t do Struggle’ followed by my name. Later on while researching codependency in the 90’s I came up with another mantra that will solve anyones life crisis and move on. It was FEEL IT, CLAIM IT,>DUMP IT. This too is still used today on my address when they send out recent booklists.

KGrHqZioE-qoIQmBfBP7hjlmQ_32-300x243Serenity in recovery often means giving up the struggle in order to WIN. When you register that struggle serves no purpose, it can dissolve as quickly as it arrived. Scarcity or not enough in any form, is linked to the concept of struggle but handing over struggle, or the requirement to create it, to higher vibrations is not all the work you need to do, physically removing yourself from struggle is the real solution. Many of us have learnt to struggle through experience, in fact we are very successful at it. By definition it’s impossible to say you have failed. Rather like people who say they have no discipline yet have been disciplined with struggle all their lives. Switch words around. Letting go of people, places and things is like clearing a cupboard that is rammed full with rubbish you think you need. You don’t. So get clearing.

My own struggle with a physical chronic illness during the eighties came to an end when I attended a ‘Benefits of Illness’ workshop. Instead of struggling with a dominating physical partner ( as in a relationship ) I was struggling with a dominating virus in the same codependent way. It controlled my life. Once I realised that I had a choice whether to accept struggle as a pain, the pain of struggle left. When people asked me how my health was, I would respond ‘ I am more than my health identity’. This assisted me is seeing that codependency, the attachment of struggle, was at it’s end. Stuart Wilde’s little pamphlet affirmed that ” If it’s easy for me, it’s right for me’ and I have to admit that I have followed this path ever since. As Marianne Williamson said ” when people say you are so lucky, just remind them it’s because you practiced “. Letting go of struggle is not a given, it’s practice. The last 4 months doing very little has been a doddle. Just being, waiting but not wanting. It’s been a breeze.

Check out the link below, start practicing, and start to chuck out the chintz today.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/39659258/Stuart-Wilde-Life-Was-Never-Meant-to-Be-a-Struggle

Time Waster

by Rebirth Your Life

You may find you spend hours each day, or lie awake at night, worrying about your situation. You may torture yourself worrying where a certain person is and with whom.

You may go over and over the past, reminding yourself of the pain, or recounting every detail in an episode or project you have on-going, projecting a problem before it appears. Living this way is addictive for many – it’s called OBSESSION. There are all kinds of obsessive fixations, using WORK as the only way to feel good about oneself is one example, needing peoples approval is another or continuously thinking you are right is not an obvious fixation, but we all know someone who refuses to be wrong. In fact they are obsessively RIGHT.

An athlete can be obsessed about winning but this may not be an unhealthy fixation because the obsession holds a positive destination. Worrying about a friends health holds no purpose at all except to show them that you care at the cost of losing your own marbles. ” I was worried sick “, what’s the point of that? A total time waster. Showing you care holds many a stance, and can often be a subconscious game of manipulation and control. Caring for a sick friend healthily can mean just being available, or telling it like it is, tough love if required. I was told in my early days of recovery by a woman who genuinely cared for me, enough to say ” stop whining looking for sympathy “. It wont work. If that’s what you want look in the dictionary between shit and syphilis, that’s where you will find sympathy, and she was not wrong.

But Obsession does serve a purpose, even if it gives an illusion of power and control over life. Some people even see worry as an essential task and a visible sign of consideration. Scheming revenge, planning punishment and holding onto pain and resentment is a full time career for some people we know. The purpose of obsession is to be worn out by it, in final surrender of this futile practice. Letting go is not natural to the serial wounded. Fear of loss of control and the rise of omnipotence delivers compulsive behaviour, because the ego insists you ” do something ” rather than feel helpless, yet helplessness is the path to forgiveness and peace. Victimhood of the past or present moment stops you from solving the past or present moment simply because we have been trained to fight and struggle. Even the first sentence of Scott Peck’s THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED says ” Life is difficult”. It goes on to further : This is the great truth, one of the greatest truths ( The first of the “Four Noble Truths” which Buddha taught was ” Life is suffering “. ) Peck goes on to say : It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult – then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact of life is difficult no longer matters. And worrying about it – even less.

So the purpose of obsession is to transcend it.

Rehab will tell you that you can’t get well until you realise how sick you are. To paraphrase Peck : Once you let go of the problem, you find solution, which is why we need to let go of obsessional time-wasting demands that serve no purpose at all – like worry. Pecks conclusion to life as a series of problems is DISCIPLINE. Not the cold shower treatment or a scarcity diet but simply the simple adage that ” discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems. Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve all problems “. Discipline simply means “to focus”.

In order to run the race of our life many think we need to be tarnished with an obsession, the obsession to get in the driving seat to tackle the Life Road head on, driving like a lunatic until we crash. It may be a minor scrape or a complete turnaround of the vehicle, no matter, the fact is that you have survived the journey to eventually become a back seat driver. Never to get in the front seat again.This is the magnificent obsession, the one to hold and cherish as a spiritual athlete, no longer needing to be in charge of the steering wheel. Yes we need to do footwork, which includes trust, but the destination is irrelevant.

Marianne Williamson wrote in her book A RETURN TO LOVE : ” Gods plan works, yours doesn’t “. This is why it’s wise to focus on the moment and not a goal in 5 years time.  It doesn’t stop me creating goals, it’s good to focus on a project, but it does stop me worrying about the destination. When I look back over the mind blowing moments of my life they were never of MY creation – a phone call, a social connection, an opportunity all ” came my way ” while I was doing something else. On one level I created it, but only because I was willing to receive without demand.

My favourite lesson in A Course In Miracles is “I will stand back and let Him lead the way”.

“Him” can be any spiritual energy you choose, I choose Haidakhan Babaji as my Master influence, my business manager, my mentor. He drives, I sit and witness the journey free of worry, free of timespan and free of anxiety. But it does require discipline to banish the ego and its mischief to avoid spiritual demand. This is the real work.