I’m delighted to be back home after a wee get away. Kenn and I went on a 7-day cruise to Alaska and my only complaint is that it was too short! LOL!! That’s the best kind of complaint for sure! We saw snow-capped mountains; uninhabited beautiful islands; lush, green, green forests; a magnificent glacier; a mama seal and her baby; and “bergy bits” which are teeny baby icebergs.
It was really wonderful to have some full-on down time. I think I’m someone who probably doesn’t pay enough attention to balance and self-care as what might benefit me, so I’m delighted when I can really just put it all down to just be and restore my vessel. The universe also helped conspire for my further good — I’m not sure of my own volition I could have easily decided not to check my emails or social media, but on the ship (as I mentioned yesterday in my talk) my older-version phone just wouldn’t connect to the ship’s wifi service. Alas! No devices for me at all. I know that was Divine intervention. Further, I paid attention to this in that I then chose not to use Kenn’s phone to check up on things so that I could consciously be in tandem with this opportunity to unplug. (And isn’t that one of the first things we’re taught to do when something doesn’t work — unplug it and reset it?)
Lately, I’m really working on the practice of making conscious in all the ways I can, to see and notice, when that thing we call Life, Creative Intelligence, God, Spirit, Mind (call it what you will) is conspiring for my good. And, I’m learning more and more that sometimes the best and sometimes hardest thing I can do is to get out of the way. I think it was Ralph Waldo Emerson who said (I paraphrase): “We need to get our bloated nothingness out of the way of the Divine Circuits.”
I seem to be leaning into this more and more as I’ve experienced more than a few things of late that have given me the message that my human nature — the one who likes to think she has all the answers, is in control and can figure everything out on her own — is out of her league.
Kathianne Lewis, the senior minister in Seattle, posted this on Facebook the other day: “I’m tired of ‘figuring things out’. I’m trusting God for more insight, less effort.”
For me lately, the shorthand words I’ve been using as a mantra for myself are surrender and trust… and when I bring them to my mind to remind me to do that, I also take a deep, slow conscious breathe to lock it in. This isn’t always easy for a person recovering from heavy reliance on intellect and control. I do sometimes fall back into old habits, but when I re-remember, and “turn it over to something Greater than I am” it feels expansive and freeing. I’m learning more and more to also trust that ‘feeling intelligence’ in my body.
So if there’s something you’ve been wrestling with and you’ve tried everything you know to try to make it work, or force it to turn out a certain way, I invite you to join me, in trusting for more insight and less effort.
Yours in surrender and trust,
Dr. Deborah
If you missed yesterday’s talk by Dr. Deborah Gordon titled Our Father, you can watch it and other past services on the CSLK YouTube channel.
MIND-FULL MOMENT
“Always say ‘yes’ to the present moment… Surrender to what is. Say ‘yes’ to life — and see how life starts suddenly to start working for you rather than against you.”
— Eckhart Tolle
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