WAIT HERE: PATH CLEARING 101
Just for now, just stop. Stop always making plans and planning makes. Stop returning that last phone call, that first text, running through that thirty-seven item to-do list (yes, I’m counting) that never seems to get shorter. While everything is living and breathing and green, a jubilee of July, just for today, tomorrow, or at least for this moment: “die on purpose.”
You are going to sit right down and let the world go on without you, for a few minutes, a few hours, a day…or perhaps from a longer period of time in summer. The world will continue on its axis. If you just removed yourself, like my folks did when we were little, whisking us off to summer shacks peppered with family, with no telephone and no technology (what was that?), there would be no one to have to respond to.
Think about it. If you did die, those vital responsibilities and immediate obligations of yours would evaporate. Either someone else will do them or they will simply expire by themselves, from lack of attention. That urge to get up and fold the laundry, attend to the mail, all the things that will always be there may ease if you take a few moments to “die on purpose” to the rush of time while you are still living. By “dying” now in this way, you actually become more alive now. From the perspective of the eternal, where is the necessity about worrying about anything in an absolute way?
You free yourself to have time for the present. This is what stopping can do. There is nothing passive about it. And when you do decide to go, go anywhere with anyone, it’s a different kind of going because you stopped. You are given guidance. Just watch this moment, no trying to control it, NO PLANNING. It’s a spiritual practice, dying on purpose.
So how are you feeling? How is this being present to simply “being” instead continually “doing” feeling for you? Can you feel the intermittent breeze of a warm summer’s evening? See the riot and blare of bright red and orange trumpet flowers cascading over the tool shed? What do you smell? Are you struggling or afraid? It’s all OK.
Practice for now: “Die to having to have anything be different in this moment; in your mind and in your heart, give yourself permission to allow this moment to be exactly as it is and allow yourself to be exactly as you are. Then, when you’re ready, move in the direction your heart tells you to go, mindfully and with resolution.” – Jon Kabat Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are
