Good morning everyone. It trust many of us remembered to set a positive intention for the day. If we have been, I’m sure you’ve noticed those times where we drop the toast butter side down and we go to react, and it’s that intention that deflects us to do less suffering and just deal with the small mess.
Each day I look at memes and quotes where people often misunderstand their potential meaning, or they are unsure of how to turn them into practical action. In this case, this nebulous but accurate advice can be translated into the idea that we should all become collectors. And what we are collecting are memories of things that we have let go. Maybe it’s something we lost or were embarrassed by, and it used to bother us, but now we’re over it. Maybe it was something we did, but now we don’t need to any more.
Maybe we used to be terrified every time we got called in to see our boss, but now we can stay relaxed because we feel like we belong –meaning we’ve ‘let go’ of our idea that we don’t belong.
Maybe it used to make us furious when our spouse left their clothes all over the place. But now, unless we’re hungry and tired and in a fragile state, we just pick the stuff up and hamper it with little more than some grumbles because we know they’re doing likewise for us on some other issue.
We can do these things for one reason: We ‘let go’ of the idea that people –including ourselves– need to change in order for us to love them.
Today’s meditation is ideal for pairs or a small group. To help us to remember to do it actively, we can compete to see who can find the most examples. We are looking for instances where we are grateful that we ‘let go’ of some thing, or person, or place, or idea.
Collect as many as you can and notice yet another way in which you have grown. We can’t expect to feel good if we sit around all day only noticing what we aren’t, or what skills we wish we still had. We also have to look at what we are, and what skills we do have. And sometimes those are exposed by removing whatever is concealing them. So it makes sense to be grateful for that removal process.
Even if it’s just for this one meditation, see if you can compete with a friend to find examples of where you were better off without. It’ll give you a reason to discuss your findings, and more human contact and conversations about our mutual successes can help us through this 2nd Wave. And even without the partner, done earnestly, this meditation will show you that you’ve matured far more than you may have noticed.
Enjoy the day.
peace, s
A serious childhood brain injury lead Scott to spend his entire life meditating on the concepts of thought, consciousness, reality and identity. It made others as strange to him as he was to them. When he realized people were confused by their own over-thinking, Scott began teaching others to understand reality. He is currently CBC Radio Active’s Wellness Columnist, as well as a writer, speaker and mindfulness instructor based in Edmonton, AB where he still finds it strange to write about himself in the third person.