Just An Ordinary Day - Part 2

Well, since I can find a metaphor for nearly everything that happens in my world, I just had to share this one. It seems fitting for what I have been experiencing lately.

As part of my “ordinary day” experience on Tuesday, my husband and I were preparing to put the storm windows on the bay window in our living room. The two angled side windows butt up to the brick on the front of the house, making for a rather tight area to maneuver the storm windows into. My husband has struggled with this for the 13 winters that we have been here.

After I cleaned the outside of the window I went inside. I turned towards the window and looked over to where my husband was outside. I could see that he was struggling with the storm window to get it into the track of the window frame. In that same instant the glass broke - crack. The look on his face as he looked at me through the window was priceless. A kind of little boy look that said: oh-oh, I’m in trouble now. I’m sure the look on my face reflected his. It was an “oh shit” moment for both of us. :)

In his struggle to force the window to fit into the framework he was warping it, which caused the glass to break. Forcing it caused too much stress, and something had to give - and it did. In reflecting on the event, I realized that this is what I have been doing in my life as well. I’ve been trying to make things happen, fighting against the constraints of our current circumstances. In the process *I* keep warping and cracking - because it’s too much unnatural stress on my system. Spiritually I know it doesn’t work to “force” a breakthrough, insight, or awareness. Neither does it work to try to get life to go the way *I* want it to - which, as I discovered, is what causes the struggle to begin with. I know this, but I keep falling back into the struggle.

So once again I realized that what I need is to relax back into the groove of just Being and allow things to “fit” in their own way, in their own time, without forcing them. If I struggle with trying to make life fit my idea of what it should be, it won’t happen. If I struggle with how life is going I meet resistance – and something breaks – usually me. Once again I have to learn to just rest in the embrace and flow of the Inner Being that just IS – the Essence that knows no struggle.

So with this little window episode, as well as my other “ordinary day” experiences that day, I began to see what I needed to see: In our True Nature there is an innate flow with life – like the geese that fly south in time for the winter. We naturally and intuitively do what is right from within, when the time is right. Wednesday, in the solitude of being home alone, and therefore some time to just BE, I could feel the resistance with life begin to let go as I consciously began to relax into the inner Embrace. I settled into a sense of inner flow with Being, with Self – with the Awake Aware Presence that was waiting there all along – just waiting for me to quit struggling. The invitation was so obvious - just rest and recognize the Presence that is always there waiting. In that recognition the innate flow with Life opened up again with a new sense of awareness: Life lives Itself naturally in the flow of simply being with life as it is…

Life lived fluidly…