You know how it feels when you have a new thought. You have a sudden flash of insight that hasn’t occurred to you before. You see something from a fresh perspective or a new angle. This happened to me the other day. I was relaxing and started to think about the power of intention and what it is to set an intention. As I was reflecting on this, it suddenly occurred to me, “What if I don’t set an intention to align with my true nature and just relax?”
I know this probably doesn’t sound ground-breaking to anyone else. It most likely falls into the category of facepalm, duh! But I saw something new. I saw how I was still trying to do spirituality. I was still trying to use my personal will to be spiritual. This is not what I teach. This is not what I share with my clients, but there it was in plain sight, visible in a way it had not been visible to me before.
Now don’t read this as a diatribe against setting intentions or as any kind of advice-giving whatsoever. I’m only speaking for myself and acknowledging the freedom I felt when I caught myself in another layer of doing that I hadn’t seen.
With that recognition, I wondered, what if I trust that I am spiritual and there is no effort required for me to do spiritual? What if I can just relax into being myself without using my personal willpower and effort to try and guide my focus and awareness to align with love and peace? What if that is just what is there when I don’t try?
Well, that is what I discovered. The letting go even more felt amazing. It felt relaxing, nurturing, fun, freeing, luscious, resourcing, nurturing… the adjectives just keep coming. It felt good. And it felt better than me trying to control the show.
Having this blind spot revealed to me helped me to see how many times I try to control my experience with the illusion of being high-minded and spiritual but really it is just my personal mind trying to direct my experience.
My exploration now is what happens when I let go of that layer of conditioning that is focused on doing spiritual, doing kind, doing positive, doing loving, doing good? My inkling is that with less effort on doing, I will spend more time being kind, being loving, and just being, and have less resistance to the times when I am being something that doesn’t fit those categories which are actually very loving.
Like Michael Singer’s surrender experiment, I am not just surrendering to what life throws my way. I am also surrendering to the inner experiences of my humanity and letting myself roll with them more and waking up to the places where I still resist and try to jump in and manage.
How much more freedom can I handle? I don’t know, but I am going to do my best to try and find out and push the envelope. I want to test the edges of my desire to control so I can truly let go in the moment and be. Be me however that is in that moment.
I am willing to trust the deeper intelligence within me to be the guide and the doer. And am willing to let go of my illusion of control that I am doing anything. This does not feel nihilistic. It feels liberating and freeing. It feels intoxicatingly good to not be in control. Exciting and alive. I don’t know where the force of aliveness will take me, but I do know it will be places that my personality wouldn’t choose.
I will listen to Rumi’s words and surrender:
Weep, and then smile. Very little grows on jagged rock.
Be ground.
Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are.
You have been stony for too many years.
Try something different.
Surrender. ~ Rumi
This post was originally published on Rohini’s Blog at https://www.therewilders.org/rohini-s-blog.
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Rohini Ross is co-founder of “The Rewilders.” Listen to her podcast, with her partner Angus Ross, Rewilding Love. They believe too many good relationships fall apart because couples give up thinking their relationship problems can’t be solved. In this season of the Rewilding Love Podcast, Rohini and Angus help a couple on the brink of divorce due to conflict. Angus and Rohini also co-facilitate private couples’ intensives retreat program that rewild relationships back to their natural state of love. Rohini is also the author of the ebook Marriage, and she and Angus are co-founders of The 29-Day Rewilding Experience and The Rewilding Community. You can follow Rohini on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. To learn more about her work and subscribe to her blog visit: TheRewilders.org.