Lighten Up
Minimalism update:
I did it! I got rid of the lamps! Hallelujah. The lamps are gone, I have taken three boxes and a garbage bag of clothes to the thrift store. And it feels good. I will admit to slowing down a bit this week, as I finish up the term at school, and prepare for Christmas. My ability to be cut-throat seems to have lessened a little. But I can feel it growing, the clutter of Christmas is already making me crave another purge.
I had this realization this morning. Yet another reminder to lighten up.
Got up to meditate, but meditation was distracted, I felt anxious, couldn’t stop thinking about the list of things I have to do. Felt my breath was shallow, mind kept wandering. Overall, it was one of those sessions where I feel I am not meditating “well”. I am getting better at not making that mean anything, at just noticing what happens to be today. Or so I think.
Afterwards, doing a little writing, I explored the anxiety, the sensations in my body. And I realized that I am assigning meaning to the adrenaline, I have decided it is bad to be feeling this way, and am therefore worried. Anxious about the anxiety. What the what?!?!
It’s hilarious. A habit I choose to break.
The feeling of anxiety, the actual physical sensation, is a lot like the feeling of excitement. So why decide that those sensations are bad, are to be worried about, are to be removed? Why not, instead, notice them, not attach a story to them, and then release them?
Truly, it is in the releasing of the story, of just noticing the feelings, the physical sensations without any judgment, that they dissipated.
I know all this intellectually. But today, for possibly the first time, I felt it.
Over and over I receive this message lately: Lighten Up!!!!!
I think that is my mantra for 2018. And not in a disparaging “Lighten up, you idiot” way. Just in a gentle reminder way. Lighten up. Release physical objects, old stories, old limiting beliefs and behaviours, let them go. Lighten up to Light up, to become the Light you are, to let the Light you are shine forth.
It’s so exciting! Perhaps this is what those physical sensations were all about - part of me knew this was coming!
Lighten up. Let go of all those limitations and see what happens.
Lighten up. Let go of all that stuff you’re carting around and see what happens.
Lighten up.
Light up.
Light.
