Embracing the Puzzle: Surrendering Control and Welcoming Change

This week the picture is coming from me. The message that has been coming this week is Let go. The image this week is of open hand with a ball of light just above it hovering above the Earth. The earth in this picture represents the material world. The hand represents our control of our physical self or illusion of control, I should say. The light above it is what some people may call God, or universal energy, or consciousness, or source, or spirit. I personally believe all of those words are interchangeable. 

So why is it coming forward this week this week? I have had some reminders that we/me are not in control of life. These reminders are subtle, thank God, it's not traumatic, thank God, because if you don't listen to the universe when it delivers these messages sometimes the messages can be pretty aggressive. Luckily this week they weren't aggressive. How I see them, these messages, or reminders I should say, that you/we/me or not in control. 

It's so funny because we all want to have control. We all want to have... it's like the control somehow equals safety. That if nothing is changing, then we're safe. If we're in control of the change, then we're in control of our lives. I have no idea where this came from or comes from but I do feel like as a society, as a people, as humanity, we all own it. A lot of the times we try to monitor our material world control our material world in hopes that that will help control our world, internal/ external. So sometimes when you want things to go a certain way, and they just don't. Like the universe is checking in and being like "nah not today buddy. no this is not the way it's gonna roll out." you know? "this is not it is not the way that's not the way I have planned for you" and you're like "but why?! but why? this is what I do this is how I want it to go this is how I see it" and the universe is like "yeah but you are just seeing this like tiny piece of the puzzle and I got the whole like Bajillion piece puzzle I'm working on here and this isn't how it rolls". 

So we have a couple of choices in this scenario we can sit back and pout and scream like a two year old, which let's be honest we all want to do. Or take a deep breath, dig into faith, dig into trust, and dig into remembering that we are not in control. That's a good thing because just like the universe saying 'I'm working on this Bajillion piece puzzle and you're only working on one corner and that's not the way it fits' the universe has, or whatever you believe in, whatever labels do you want to give it, to us all knowing entity, the source of energy, it knows the whole puzzle. It has the map. It has the picture of how the pieces go together when and where they come together and we don't. So in a way it's better. It's great that we're not the ones putting the puzzle together. We're just the ones on the journey of the puzzle being put together. Yet somehow we still want to get in the driver seat. 

I feel like our society is so based on the material world, hence the representation of the earth in the image, and we are so connected to it and we're so trained that if we do AB and C than D will certainly arrive. And in some cases that's 100% true, but it's not a guarantee. Nothing in life is a guarantee. One of my favorite sayings, I have a lot of them if you haven't noticed, but one of the ones but I didn't come up with that I love, is changes the only constant in life. So when we're trying to bank on something, hold onto something, the only way we can hold onto it, is to know that it's essence, it's nature is not to be held, not to be stagnant. As I learn more about yoga theory and philosophy and history and I start to peer into the world of quantum physics, I realize that they are not different. They are saying a lot of the same things and one of them being, which I've mentioned before, is that in yoga philosophy all things have energy have vibration. Everything, a piece of paper on my desk, my computer, my incense, not to mention my children making noises in the background, they all have energy. They all have vibration. And my minimal understanding of quantum physics is that they are finding now that everything at its source is energetic is vibratory is in state of movement of change.

I mean, even now, I just had to go tell my kids to be quiet and I'm super frustrated because I asked them to be quiet and they weren't being quiet and the irony of that is that I am trying to control that which cannot be controlled. Technically, really. It's a source of frustration. For all of us. It's a source of frustration when we can't control things, but we are not supposed to. 

I'm curious to where this source or need for control comes from, if it is inherent in the entire universe is not in our hands to be controlled. Part of me wonders if it comes from the fact that there is an element of us that is the seer or comes from the seer. We are stardust, we are earth, we are physical, dense entities. So maybe that part of us that wants to get back to that source energy is somehow trying to be the seer of our lives. But the thing is we can't 'see' in this body. Quite possibly with multitudes of training and digging deep into your spiritual psychic self, or connect deeper to that seer within. But it never comes from outside you. It's never controlling the outside world that gives you the 'seer-ness' in you. In yoga, I've talked about the vrittis as being obstructions for the mind and the senses as being a part of those obstructions. The things we see, hear, taste, touch, feel, smell, they pull our minds out of our bodies. They pull our experience out into the physical world and not inward into the spiritual world. So when we seek to control, we seek outward to control. And I am 100% talking about myself right now. I hope you recognize elements that resonate with you. Why I'm sharing. 

A good friend of mine, Kelley Kitley, wrote a beautiful book. Kelley is a social worker and her book is titled 'MySelf'. You can find it on amazon. The book turned into a fabulous short film, if I do say so myself since I played Kelley in the short film. But what she says in her book and I love this so much, because I do feel like its how I subconsciously live my life to a fault. She says, "I bare my scars so that others can heal". I feel like that's what I'm doing or trying to do here in these episodes. 

My yoga teacher's father had a saying, or analogy that we are all like an onion peeling back the layers. The layers are thin, they may make you cry and there are many before you get to the core. 

I feel like this message came forward for me this week, like a guard rail. To remind me that I am being pulled out instead of in. It's so interesting to me that when I feel lost, or I feel disconnected, it's because I've been drawn out instead of within. And when I get drawn back within again, through something like a beautiful meeting with me teacher, or a class that reconnects me to myself, or even a few minutes alone in nature, it's like a coming home. It fills me with emotion, sometimes tears, but not in a painful way. In a reunion like way. Like if someone has been gone at war for a long time and they finally return and. you are just so overwhelmed to see them it brings you to tears, because you love them so much. You've missed them in your life. And the funny thing is it's always there. It's always there. The only war we go away to is the outside world. The only battle to be had is the one within. Choosing to stay within, connect within instead of outwardly trying to control. 

I'm going to use an analogy that my teacher said to me years ago and I thought it made perfect sense. Although I offered it to someone else who was like "that doesn't make any sense" So I'm going to offer it here to you, and if makes sense to you great. If it doesn't meh, whatever. She was explaining purusha and prakruti. Purusha would be like source energy and prakruti would be the manifestation of personality within this lifetime, ourselves, our physical beings. So nature. What she said was, and this was echoing - change is the only constant in life - she said if you were on a train, next to another train, and you are both going at the same pace and speed, and you are looking at each other, how do you know you if you are moving? How do you know if there is any change? In order to know that you are moving, to know that there is change. One thing must be still while the other moves. She used this analogy to bring to life. We see change daily. If we see change around us there must be something that is still to help us with that perspective to notice the change. The stillness is source energy, god, prana, Purusha. 

Holding on, trying to control causes tension and frustration. It causes resistance to your universal life path. It causes resistance to source energy. It's the opposite of having faith and trust in source energy and god. It's closing yourself off to happy accidents, buddhist gifts. It's choosing to be in control, or fighting to be in control is our physical manifestation and the ego at play separating yourself from others. That you are different in some way shape or form and that you are not connected. I do believe that we are all connected. I do believe that we are all a piece of the whole or the whole within many wholes that make up many wholes. When we see that in each other and connect with each other in that way, personality is removed on that soul level. We see each other's light. We recognize each other as the same which is a gateway into the source energy. It's seeing the source energy in someone else and recognizing it's resonance in you connects you more deeply to it. 

The ego is not a bad thing. It gets a bad wrap. It's like a wild horse. It has power and can move. you forward. As long as it's trained and not in control of you. The ego gets you up in the morning, makes sure you get dressed, fed, makes sure you get to work on time, etc. whatever it is. But when the ego starts to make separations between you and the rest of the world, then it's taking control. 

The universe joins. The ego separates. Holding on to that separation is the lesson. Detachment. Aparigraha, Let go.