Hello friends,
Today's mini awakening practice is about taking responsibility for our relationship to our experience.
We know that in life we often cannot dictate our next experience or even what the next thought will be in our heads.
But we can become conscious of our relationship with whatever happens.
The invitation here is to become conscious,
To be aware of whatever you're experiencing.
What you're feeling about your environment,
About a situation,
A challenge,
A relationship,
A conversation,
And how you're relating to your thoughts around that.
Notice that in a certain sense almost all of your experiences happen to you.
They simply occur,
Like thoughts,
They simply arise.
So what we're saying here is not that we should take responsibility for what arises because we often can't control that.
We're talking about what it means to take responsibility for how we relate to our experience.
The most important thing is not to blame yourself or blame anyone else for what you're experiencing.
Your relationship with the current experience determines how the next moment will unfold.
It's a way of removing projections so that we're not making people responsible for how we feel,
We're not making life responsible for how we feel.
Instead we're noticing that it's our relationship with any moment that determines how we're going to feel about that moment.
So take a moment now to notice your relationship with a particular experience.
Try to focus on something in particular.
It could be a work situation,
Something in your environment,
A relationship.
Notice how your relationship with that experience determines the quality of your being in that moment.
And notice how your relationship to that experience is changeable.
So let's say you're upset that your mind is racing.
You can be upset about it or you can just acknowledge,
Okay,
My mind is racing now.
Do I have to resist it?
Do I need to judge myself or judge my mind?
What if I didn't judge myself?
What if I didn't resist my mind?
And by changing that relationship to the racing mind,
Just notice how that changes your experience.
How it changes the quality of your being in this moment.
You can take the same approach if you're feeling fear about something or anxiety.
So the invitation is not to focus so much on the fear or the anxiety but to notice your relationship with it.
Are you anxious about being anxious?
Are you judgmental of yourself about being afraid?
Notice that your relationship with your experience determines the quality of the very next moment.
So the invitation here is to choose what you decide to focus on,
Letting go of negative judgments of yourself or others.
Letting go of the idea that you're to blame for how you feel or that someone else is to blame.
Even if someone criticizes you,
Notice that it's what you do with that criticism,
How you're in relationship to that criticism that determines the very next experience you have.
So the deeper invitation is to see if you can withhold judgment and let go of trying to control your experience and allow it to unfold.
You can ask yourself what would be a more benign relationship with this experience?
How can I relate to this moment in a more gentle way,
In a more conscious way,
In a kinder way?
Try that now with whatever situation is present for you.
Take a moment to see if you can shift into a more benign relationship with it,
A gentler,
Kinder relationship with it.
And notice if that changes the quality of your being in the next moment.
If you do this throughout the day,
At the end of the day,
You're likely to find that your experience has changed.
Often it changes in ways that are surprising,
That you never could have imagined.
You can have a different relationship with life.
This practice,
So simple,
Can be amazingly powerful.
Take your time with it,
Experiment,
And see what shifts over time.
Be well,
My friend.
