OK, bought a “new” car, a 10 year old Volvo V70 with a busted odometer display, suspicious power steering and weak A/C for $1800. But it’s clean and nice, quality and new tyres, all that and looks good on me, more than the hand-me-down cars I have been driving for the last decade have, the Caravan, the Intrepid, the Outback.
Now, why did I start with the bad stuff, and only then go to the good?
Training, I guess.
There has been a lot of pressure on me to shop and buy, but this transaction fell into place easily, though with waiting. CraigsList, a car that was posted and went away, waiting, first person to see it, an owner who screwed up the power steering by overfilling, and a $500 drop in asking price. I made the sale simple, he said to me, and I got an apparently nice car (surprises are always possible) for a good price.
I knew that I had to believe things would fall into place, that there would be a harmony and an unfolding, that trusting the universe would be crucial. I had to do my part — and yes, there was waiting and calling and driving and such — but the universe had to do its part, too. There is no way I could have prepared myself for what specifically happened, but by having general rehearsal and preparation, I could fix the power steering problem with paper towels and a plastic bag.
It wasn’t about grunting it out, but it was about trusting the process.
This is a very hard place for me to stay, especially around my family. The tradtion here is to grind, not to trust, to tighten up rather than to go with the flow. And “help” for me is seen as assisting me in getting more tensioned up, not in assisting me relax and trust.
Personally, I have come to the end of where getting tight is a useful approach. I am as tight as the parking spot my father chose last night, and it’s not doing squat for me, now, is it? My body is racked and wracked, my life decaying rather than growing.
But how do I explain to people who approach the world as a struggle that I need to relax? How do I get them express belief in me, belief in my creator, belief in the possibilities of our world?
To believe, of course, I need to trust that what I know to be true is true, and act on that belief. (And to not be a fundamentalist, I have to allow that knowlege tested and adjusted as I grow, rather than clinging to beliefs even when the world does not affirm them.)
Marianne Williamson has said that her breakthrough with ACIM was when she accepted the message to relax, that every moment holds miracles if we open to them, and that sometimes a wrong choice can be more valuable than a calculated and forced “right” choice. Dropping the tension to engage the moment offered much more than struggling to achieve something “perfect” or straining to figure out and do what others think we should do.
I know that to engage my power as a femme, I need to be able to flow.
Is life a dance, or is it a tussle?
I know which of those paths does not work for me.
Callan 