At 4 a.m. in the morning a few days back, in what is for me a time of heightened emotions, I felt myself so overwhelmed by situations I faced that I simply surrendered to Archangel Michael and told him I couldn’t handle matters without his help.
There was a period of silence. And then these thoughts impressed themselves on my mind.
(1) Love, love, love is the answer to every problem. That’s the starting point and the only order of the day. Without this, nothing else matters. Breathe up love on the inbreath and send it out to the world on the outbreath. You’ll experience the love as it’s passing through.
(2) Pull out of yourself all the arrows of resentment you put in yourself since attaching to the impediment to love. By doing so, reverse the impact of the automatic resentment machine.
(3) Detach yourself from anything that appears to be an impediment to love. Use your magic garden shears or Archangel Michael’s sword of truth to cut the ties of attachment between you and the thing blocking your path to love. Cut all attachments indiscriminately. Those that are temporary and ensnaring will fall away. Those that are permanent and loving will persist, no matter what.
(4) Forgive yourself for attaching.
(5) Don’t erect any further impediments to love. When you find yourself doing it, stop and let go.
(6) Express gratitude for everything you’re able to be, do, and have.
(7) Let the world outside be without judging it or trying to fix it. (1)
(8) Go back to (1) and start again.
Don’t allow yourself to fall asleep on this process. Repeat it many times a day until it becomes a reflex action.
Point 7 is the matter that may prove most troublesome. Here’s an example of it from my own experience today.
Ikea delivered a bed to my apartment (I’m finally up off the floor). And in so doing the deliverymen seriously damaged my apartment door.
As it happened, the landlady came up to replace a blind and asked me what happened to the door. I told her Ikea banged it up and she said I’d have to pay for it.
Years ago I’d have resisted the implication that the banged-up door is my responsibility. If I couldn’t avoid responsibility, I might try to find excuses to establish my innocence and avoid paying as a responsible, but ultimately innocent, party.
I didn’t do either. I acknowledged my responsibility for the door. Period.
Someone has to pay for the door and that someone falls in a line of responsibility, starting with me and going to Ikea. (Ikea, by the way, opened a claim on the door without protest.)
I’m neither resisting matters by denying responsibility nor making excuses above and beyond stating the simple truth of the matter. I’m also neither judging the participants nor trying to fix blame or anyone’s neuroses, including mine.
That shows up for me as allowing the world outside to be – to be what it is and how it is, not as I think it should be. This course of action reduces my attachment to the world significantly.
This is my new, opening discipline. For others it might prove to be a heart-opening discipline. I don’t know. I hope it does.
It’s time for me to cut a new groove and think with the heart. Love, love, love is the answer to every problem.
Footnotes
(1) Some things do need fixing, but “fixing” here refers to a neurotic need to feel important by having contributed to the situation through fixing something or someone, instead of, for instance, listening to them.