It's Okay To Have A Good Day

Have you ever had one of those days? How about one of those weeks, or months, or even years? What about years stacked up on top of each other like dominos, ready to topple with the slightest touch?

Some days I think my life has been like that. In fact, most the days of my life I saw things that way, even on the "good days". I have often looked back on my life with both horror and wonder; exclaiming to myself, "You are a walking miracle!" I have spent months on end pulling myself up out of the latest drama/ trauma and resulting mental-emotional (and thus physical) wreckage, telling myself that I love myself and I deserve to be comfortable and well. But for most of my life those words were just bluster.

I was practicing the age old "fake til you make it" technique. But what no one tells you is that it's difficult to decipher when you've "made it". There's no certificate, no trumpets, and most of all there's no constancy to any of it. In fact, each moment demands that you be real. And there's no going back.

But perhaps the most distressing part of "making it" (whatever that means for you: could be spiritual, could be social, could be financial, could be work or love related.... truly, whatever brass ring you are reaching for), is that when you arrive, all hell breaks loose. And this hell breaking loose will most likely look very familiar to you, in fact, while you're on the "faking it" path, H-E-double-hockey-sticks may have to break loose on you several times before you recognize what's going on. The more you investigate, figure it out and fix it, the further away from "making it" you travel.

When you fill your head with all the remedies, exercises, practices, checklists, recommendations from the "experts" you leave little room for the singular "voice" that will guide you truly and faithfully. And that is the key word. We shy away from it in this post-modern, wanna-be dystopian society.

Faith. Pshaw! Even when all the presumed experts are actually pointing you in the right direction and giving you the true "answers", you're not likely to walk in the direction they're pointing. Most of us resist the goodness that is here for us. We're born with a negativity bias. How many times have you been humming along quite nicely and that one thing happens to "completely wreck" your day? You know those days when wake up in the morning and see something disturbing on social media, or someone cuts you off in traffic, or you spill your coffee on the way to work and you just can't shake it off. You're grumpy all day. You're a lousy person to be around. How many times have you said to yourself or even others, "I hate my life" or "I've lost all faith in humanity"?

We humans spend most of our waking life moving further and further away from our own well being. We develop habits to compensate for our shortcomings, we develop addictions to numb ourselves from feeling our perceived shortcomings, we fill our lives with media, information, relationships, projects, hobbies, work, obligations, and commitments all of which we pursue in a state of frenzy. We pile on more stressors, as if life doesn't provide us with enough challenges as it is. We ignore our inner knowing. We turn our power over to our political leaders, our healthcare professionals, the IRS, "the scientists", the justice system, our parents, our teachers; all the internalized versions of external "authority". We fail to take true authority over our own lives, while we're constantly checking to see if we measure up to someone else's idea of who and how we should be.

But sometimes, we're called to break out of that. Or more accurately put, sometimes we can hear the sound of our own music in the distance. And in that moment, there's a crack in the facade; we're done for. We start to want something more than this gerbil-wheel charade we call a life. We begin to believe there could be REAL life outside this gilded cage.

As we explore, as we begin to tune in to that music and attempt to amplify it, we are given MANY gifts. Some we recognize, many we do not (until perhaps much later down the road). Most of the gifts, even the ones we recognize, we take for granted and diminish their value.

After all, we're swimming upstream. We're going against the grain, and we're not used to this. It's hard. And can actually feel very discouraging. Not anything like we expected it to feel!

It takes at LEAST a five-fold experience of wonder/gratitude/perceived & integrated sense of well being in order to counteract our ingrained negativity bias. And not only that, but must also go against the grain of confirmation bias as well.

Even as we walk on the path of self inquiry/ consciousness/wokeness we're consistently encountering subtle and not so subtle obstacles. We look at the evidence around us, it confirms our negativity bias, and we create self fulfilling prophecies.

It's easy to get sucked back into old habits. This is why we need teachers. They give us things to lean on and lean into, for example, "Fall down 7 times, get up 8", "that was then, this is now", "one day at a time". The list goes on and on. When we use these teachings, wisely, like crutches, they help us to learn how to walk again and again. And all this we do while surrounded by others who are living in opposition to the sound of their own music, stepping in time to the beat of a multitude of external "authorities". We do this while surrounded by people who think we're crazy/foolish/selfish/dangerous. Sometimes those people will even slander us, stalk us, assault, or abuse us.

It's easy to allow these things to drown out the melody we're called to sing. It's easy to allow all this; all that the news tells us, all the atrocities unfolding, all the cries of suffering the world over... it's easy to allow all of this to overwhelm our senses and crowd out the "still small voice within", the voice, the song, the music that is calling us home.

And so.... when we've been falling and getting up for a long enough time, and we've strengthened some of those muscles, we begin to think we've "made it". We start to feel good.

Life becomes a bit easier. All that chaos impinges upon us less and less. BEWARE! This is the edge of the cliff (and yes, you've been led there most decidedly).

Now you have a few choices, you can fall off the cliff, you can jump, or you can fly.

Although it's up to you, you may not really be aware of this choice. You may simply fall, crashing in a giant heap at the bottom. Broken again. We fall when we think we've made it. We puff up with our greatness, we put on airs, we deem ourselves to have "made it", we even use our gratitude, compassion, and wokeness to assert our station in life. We have succeeded!! "Look at me! I made it!" All while we teeter on the precipice.

But even this fall is part of the journey, because we forgot our music while we were so focused on our success. We became distracted, not by the cacophony of others, but by the felt sense of exquisiteness we experience when we tune in to our music and harmonize our lives with it. We became ensnared by this, mistaking this delicious experience for the evidence of having made it. While in fact, we've been brought to the edge of the cliff and we haven't yet begun to fly.

But when you just jump off the cliff, you'll wind up in a heap again just like before, perhaps even more confused this time because you went into it willingly. Ah, but here's the kicker.... Willingness. What are you willing to let go of? What are you willing to leave behind? Because to fly, you must become much much lighter. Many people stop here. They stay on the top of the cliff, restraining themselves because they're afraid of falling, they're afraid of letting go, they're afraid of more suffering. They're like a lonely caterpillar who finally made it to the top and has nowhere else to go. This too will create dissonance in our music. Everything will go flat. Until at last, one way or another, we're ready for our wings.

To grow your wings, dear caterpillar, you must first dissolve your self as you know your self. You must disintegrate into a primordial soup, completely still for as long as it takes, totally exposed and utterly vulnerable to whatever life throws at you. And then.... then there is work. Excruciating work, to break free of another beautiful cage, to crack yet another facade.

And no one else can do it for you, only YOU have the power to break free- first of all you were conditioned to be, then all you have become along the way. And if you submit yourself to someone else's efforts to help you, to save you.... you shall surely perish. You'll find yourself, YET AGAIN, in a heap at the bottom of the cliff. Either way, there's work to be done.

This is not EASY, but you can make the choice to embrace the challenge of the moment rather than start back at the bottom of that cliff.

Oh, but dear ones, even after emerging from your cocoon, you're STILL not ready to fly!

First, you must rest. That was a lot of work, both internally and externally! And flying is work as well, it's not all riding the drafts after all. If you want to soar, you're going to need your strength.

So NOW, you must rest. Bask in the sun, open yourself to receive it's rays. Allow the breeze to caress your body, gently swaying with its touch; learning and feeling into this new you.

It is only after this period of rest, only after you've dried off all the gunk of what-was, that you can begin to fly into what-is-becoming.

So now.... you've "made it"!

Your wings are dry and properly strengthened, you've been cleansed, transformed. You've let go of all the heavy sludge of who you used to be, all your conditioning, your toxic patterns, the propaganda about what is and is not possible; you've en-lightened yourself and you can finally take flight.

What a lovely thought that is, taking flight. Being bound to the Earth for so long, we humans tend to think of "taking flight" as something effortless. We fail to imagine the challenges we may encounter in the air. We think having wings means we've "made it", when in fact.... we've only just begun, so don't be surprised this time when all hell breaks loose and you learn how to dodge the arrows coming at you while mastering the winds.

Most assuredly, the only "good day" is the day you spend harmonizing with your own music, the day you spend attending to the needs of the moment, the day you spend relishing the nectar that awaits you even while dodging the arrows of what once was. And..... here's to many such good days until all our days are done!