I loved the insights about ‘dimming your light’ to be better equipped to keep the internal battery topped up. Self-energising feels like a really good theme – and SO needed for me!!!
Yesterday, I didn’t do a QT (quiet time of writing here). Instead I spent the time researching and making a booking for my first EXERCISE CLASS – which starts today in 1h45m. I am going to a ZUMBA class!
What do I need to bear in mind? Let’s see what our reading for today says…
-37- The Tao never strives, yet nothing is left undone. If leaders were able to adhere to it the ten thousand things would develop of their own accord. If after they have developed they experience desires to strive, they can bury those desires under the nameless Uncarved Block. The nameless Uncarved Block can protect against desire. When desires are restrained there will be peace, and then all under heaven will be at rest. (The Tao Te Ching Chap 37)
I think I prefer Stenudd’s translation:
37. The Way is ever without action,
Yet nothing is left undone.
If princes and kings can abide by this,
All things will form themselves.
If they form themselves and desires arise,
I subdue them with nameless simplicity.
Nameless simplicity will indeed free them from desires.
Without desire there is stillness,
And the world settles by itself.
So, for a girl who is about to head out and undertake a vigorous exercise class, this chapter on non-striving seems to say:
- take it gently
- don’t blow a gasket
- keep a sense of the internal
- take care not to be seeking approval from the external gaze
- check your ‘desire’ for a particular outcome, impact or experience
- keep it simple
- though it be a Zumba class, jazzhand not.
Let’s mediate.
***10mMed***
It is our desire, simply held without striving, and our suggestion, that you use the Zumba to free your physical body of held trauma and old adrenaline. You need to pump it all out of your body. Why?
A) so you can be COMFY in your body and
B) so that you can be in a state of ready parasympathetic presence (vs ego-spiked sympathetic state) in order to do the work of HORIZON-GAZING.
Horizon-gazing is your key to enjoying your life at this time.
Say, what?!
It’s simple. Your fears and anxieties are virtually all related to ‘unseen’ events coming hard and fast over your horizon. But this is largely because the horizon you’ve been gazing at goes as far as roughly ‘next Friday’. Thus, you are caught in a constant state of ‘WTH?!’ [What the heck].
I can catch a glimpse of this! See these two screenshots I took yesterday – so utterly relatable to me…
So, you’re saying that Horizon-Gazing, taking the long view, helps settle things.
For you, dear soul, the ‘racoons in a trenchcoat’ sensation diminishes when your Horizon-Gazing is strong. You become master of your own complex thoughts, and they start to work for you. They work FOR YOU. But you need to keep OWNING the focus of your attention. Being distracted by the thoughts of others is not what the blessed autistic brain was granted to you for. Make your own HORIZON (future, incoming events, path, journey, roles, responsibilities) your very most cherished SPECIAL INTEREST.
We’re ‘shouting’ because we really know this to be true.
Ok! I hear you. Using the planner this year has been good. And tracking. And working by quarters. I’m going to download ‘The 12 week year’ for my trip away at the end of this month/quarter.
There is so much to be enjoyed and relished in time and space! Yes, you are learning to work with time and space! That’s fantastic! That’s the game of this physical life! Play it!
Ty. I like this. May we all own this art of horizon-gazing. May we paint pictures of future happiness for ourselves with our own attention to all that can be, in a spirit of non-striving, in a sense of desire-without-desire, in the manner of simplicity. May I see all events coming down the line and be ready to enjoy, allow, relish, appreciate. May I know how to be ready to be ready to be ready for all the good things. May I softly LET GO NOW of my old habits of shock and anxiety. May I learn to be master of that which is on its way in time and space. Amen.
I am Horizon-Gazing