John Smallman
Saul: How Many of You Have Daily “To Do” Lists? channeled by John Smallman, August 14, 2013 at: https://johnsmallman.wordpress.com/
John’s reading of today’s message can be found here: https://johnsmallman.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/2013-08-14-saul-audio-blog-for-wednesday-august-14th.mp3
We are all enlightened beings; some of you have just forgotten that. Never mind . . . you will awaken and a most wonderful realization will dawn on you as Reality fills your awareness and your natural state of being fully conscious blossoms.
It is as though your natural state of existence had been resting, asleep, and a reduced state had been on standby during that moment. Its abilities were severely limited because it was only there to keep things ticking over; it did not have to do anything. And you, in order to awaken, do not have to do anything.
You have only to allow yourselves to let go of attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that you have held on to for many lifetimes, and which no longer serve you. It truly is very simple. However, your grip on those outmoded aspects of yourselves, which you believed were essential for your safety and survival, has, over the years and lifetimes, seemingly welded them to you. It has not – but you do need to focus on unclenching, on loosening your grip on them, and after spending all that time holding on tightly, letting go is perhaps more than a little unsettling.
Ask your guides for help to show you, or bring to your attention, those aspects to which you are clinging and that no longer serve you, and ask for help to want to release them. Often you have held on to them for so long that they can seem like essential parts of yourselves, making you feel that if you release or discard them, there will be no you left.
What you identify with as yourselves, as you live your human lives, is frequently just a mask, a very firmly attached mask, displaying your beliefs, your prejudices, and your opinions which are so firmly embedded and ingrained that you have come to identify with them. It almost seems that you are them because they have blocked out your self-awareness, your awareness of your true divine Self. Thus it may seem that if you discard the mask there will be no one left. Of course this is not the case.
Your true Self is not noisy, it is quiet, peaceful, relaxed, undemanding, and joyful, but you are so used to being driven by shoulds and musts that the peace and quiet you experience when you release them is shocking: you enter a vast space inside that seems empty, and your inclination is to immediately fill it up!
When you take time out daily to meditate you are allowing yourselves to enter that inner space of peace and quiet. Sometimes it is very inspiring and uplifting for you, but more often you are conscious of trains of unending thought flowing through you which you try, without too much success, to disperse or disregard. Spending time daily in that space, a set time – five minutes, fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, even an hour – that you have agreed with yourselves is appropriate or adequate can, in and of itself, be a major block that prevents you from entering that space.
You may find it more helpful to decide first thing each day, when you have woken up and are planning your day, to agree with yourselves that you will take time out whenever too much stress builds up, or whenever you are waiting for a late client, for a bus or train, or for the lights to change – any moment that “needs!” filling, or that is not filled with physical or mental activity – and just use that for your meditation practice. Removing the “should,” the responsibility for meditating for a fixed time at a fixed time can be very freeing. And when you feel free, wonders can be experienced.
The purpose of life is joy. But most of you are so weighed down with anxieties and responsibilities that the thought of finding joy in your lives seems ludicrous. What is ludicrous is that you allow yourselves to be so driven. Yes, you allow yourselves to be driven, because being driven is a state of mind that you choose to accept and which you can change, instantly, should you choose to. But for many of you being driven has become normal, so normal that you cannot imagine not being driven.
Things need to get done; that is part of your human life experience, but you do not have to allow those things, situations, or people to manipulate you into driving yourselves. What often happens is that you are in a situation and your mind wanders – “I have to get bread . . . the laundry . . . I am going to be late for that appointment” – and then snaps back, and it seems that you missed something important as you are asked a question that you did not hear, or you just lost a little more of your precious but severely limited time. Your mind starts to race and a state of overwhelm envelops you. Does this feel familiar? And so often you think that there is nothing that you can do about it.
How many of you have daily “to do” lists? Lists that you never succeed in completing? That in itself is telling you something very important. Possibly you often strike off half the items or more before you start or as the day progresses, and it becomes apparent that you cannot do them all. For a change make the choice not to have a list. At first, that may cause anxiety, an increase in your stress levels, a sense of playing truant, but when you have given yourselves permission to do without one, you will gain a sense of freedom. Once you get over the guilt of feeling free, which should take only a moment, joy will flood in. It may not last, but it will demonstrate to you that joy is possible.
When the truth of that realization sinks in you will find your selves far more willing to listen to the real you, the you that wants to be loved and loving, and which knows that that is its true state, and you will ease up on yourselves. You will deliberately choose not allow yourselves to be driven by yourselves, situations, or other people, and a more peaceful sense of freedom and rightness in the now moment will envelop you. Then you will be ready to awaken into Reality, and the short waiting-period before that happens will become a joy and not a trial.
With so very much love, Saul.