Isn't it Easy?
I recently saw a Facebook post that said “I always wanted extra time to deep clean my house. Turns out that “time” isn’t the issue.”
I’m pretty certain that post got a lot of laughs. Why? Because most of us can relate to it.
For the purpose of questioning things as we do in this blog, the post says “Turns out that time isn’t the issue”. If time isn’t the issue, then what is?
I mean, here I am with all this extra time to do the things that I truly wish to do and get done, yet I’m not doing them. If I’m not doing them, what am I doing instead?
I sit in my living room and realize I have a nice block of time and could tackle those windows that so desperately need cleaning. What keeps me from starting? What gets me to turn on the TV or to bake a cake instead?
We have in us something that Guy Finley (a truth teacher) refers to as “the intimate enemy”. We don’t see this intimate enemy as harmless when there was a decision to bake a cake instead of following through with our intention to clean the windows, because what’s the big deal, right? “I know the windows need to be cleaned, I’ll just do it another time.” That seems harmless enough.
It isn’t harmless though. The harm is in the fact that we are listening to the guidance of that intimate enemy that has become OUR GOD and directs us away from doing what we wish and intend and need to do.
In the instance I laid out above, the intimate enemy made the suggestion to bake a cake instead of clean the windows. Much easier to bake a cake it says, because that enemy loves taking the easy road.
The more we live from the guidance of that intimate enemy, the more difficult our lives become. Taking the easy way, isn’t the easy way at all, it’s a disguised hard way. That intimate enemy will always guide us to give up, to do something else that’s easier and more pleasurable, to say the thing that is mean because it’s easier than being kind, to not start a project because it’s easier to sit and relax.… on and on it goes.
The more we make that part of ourselves the master of our lives by being its unwitting puppet, the more it dominates our lives, increases our pain level, and the less we will reach for things outside our comfort zone. Worse yet, the less we will agree to struggle, and the less our children will as well, for we are the living example for them.
When I say struggle, what I mean is that we need to learn to remain present and observe our minds, for only then can we become aware of what it is saying to us so as to not agree to do its bidding.
Isn’t it easy to make the mean comment? Isn’t it easy to become mad? Isn’t it easy to blame others or to hold a grudge? It’s easy because we have given that mind the illusory power it has for millennia.
We aren’t even aware of its voice telling us we need to get angry, to blame, to hold a grudge. We just instantly become angry, blame and hold a grudge. We are just simply unaware of its voice because we have taken ourselves to be that mind, that voice.
That is also the explanation as to how we can walk into a room and can’t recall why we walked into it. We didn’t take ourselves there. We were the unwitting instrument of that intimate enemy and its past patterns that without our awareness owns our life. So strange, right??
The struggle is to wake up to that part of us in any moment that we are able to. Meaning, we have to make a diligent effort to be present to ourselves. It can be a difficult task for sure, but only then will we be able to catch the intimate enemy that wants to hold us back and keep us from experiencing real Life.
One morning, I had a wish to sit and write. I stood next to the table where my computer was located and I was looking at the chair knowing all I had to do was sit down and start typing, but yet it felt like I couldn’t. There was no visual “wall” keeping me from sitting down in that chair and starting, but there was a wall of resistance in my mind that was keeping me from doing so. I wasn’t aware of any voices, but I felt the resistance. I knew as difficult as it appeared, I had to just sit down and start, which I did. It really isn’t difficult to go against that mind, it just FEELS difficult, that’s all.
As Guy Finley so eloquently puts it, “Beyond the resistance is the flow”. That’s the struggle we all need to enter into every moment of our lives. It is our true work.
Exercise for the Week: Do what you don’t want to do. Share this information with you kids. Have your kids go say hi to someone that they don’t want to say hi to. Experiment with that in different situations.
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