lighter and happier

Even the things you do the same over and over seem like firsts when you have the mind set that you grow a little every day.

So even though I have moved houses many times over the course of my life, this time feels very different....it feels easier, lighter.

I am pleasantly surprised how little I need to come with me....anywhere.  I stare at the robe hanging on the door and the jewelry nearby and I smile at how fine I would be without it. 

Keep my fridge and everything in it because I have faith we will not starve no matter where we go.  The shoes? I'm good with one third of what's there.  In fact, I'm good with one third of everything when I have 100% of me. My kids.  That's all that needs to come anywhere ever. In fact, the more simple, the more quaint and cozy, the more content I have found myself to be.

I began to enjoy traveling once I was able to adopt this way of thinking.  Feels lighter than I've ever felt, like a breeze could sweep right through me and not take me with it....

Grounded....

With a roof over my head and my family underneath with me, I'm always ready. 

"Virtually everything I own is on my back and suffice it to say I am one ton lighter and therefore two thousand pounds happier."

~ Bobby Darin

Restraint

I saw this exhibit at a museum in San Francisco.  It was a room with the following sign out front..

When you walked in, it was a video of a machine used to sort pills into bottles at a factory.

A sign read the following....

RESTRAINT: A measure or condition that keeps someone or something under control or within limits; the action of keeping someone under control.

Humans have displayed great ingenuity in creating devices to restrain behavior.  But restraints don't have to be physical; they can also be legal, social, and psychological.  

We restrain our own thoughts, emotions, and desires as well as our actions.  How do you feel restrained - and why?

How do you restrain yourself?

The answers of some museum-goers hung with clothes pins along strings.  Some were very profound.  Take a minute and think of your answer.....

~L~

The Tiger

Well here we are on the other side :)

My last post was about trusting the flow of life, whatever it may bring your way....

I just got back from a week-long trip to California over the New Year.  And while I was going, coming, and while I was there, something really hit me hard...

TRUST.

Isn't it great to be able to trust no matter what? Like each time your plane takes off....or you hand a stranger your camera....or when you get hurt in a relationship but then realize you can still trust again? Or when you get sick and you know you'll be alright....even if you're not alright?

I believe that trusting is adapting, sort of like growing up but all the while feeling like you're getting younger because you're slowly liberating yourself from fear. Because isn't part of growing up letting go, breaking free of the cage you've built around you?

"When the cage of the psyche gets rattled, you fix it so that you can be comfortable inside....You have set these limits on yourself.  If you don't stay within them, you get scared, you feel hurt, threatened...that's your cage.  The tiger knows the limits of his cage when he hits the bars.  You know the limits of your cage when the psyche starts to resist.  Your bars are the outer boundary of your comfort zone.....go beyond those borders.....eventually you'll end up loving your edges because they point your way to freedom...all you have to do is constantly relax and lean into them."

~Michael A. Singer.

Traveling really does wonders...I think I'll venture more outside of my cage.

~ L ~