Totality and Relationships

There are things that come up in my life that I feel powerless toward, and it’s like I want to take some kind of action, I want to ‘do something’ to feel like I am taking my power back. But that’s not how it works. I have to not give my power away to anything in the first place. 

While I was in this bit of a torment within myself, I pulled an Osho Zen Tarot card for support. What came up was Totality. The picture is of three women on a trapeze. The description reads:

“These three women are high in the air, playful and free, yet alert and interdependent.” 

“We may feel there are too many things to do at once, but get bogged down in trying to do a bit here, a bit there, instead of taking one task at a time and getting on with it. Or perhaps we think our task is “boring” because we’ve forgotten that it’s not what you do but how you do it that matters.

Developing the knack of being total in responding to whatever comes, as it comes, is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. Taking one step through life at a time, giving each step your complete attention and energy, can bring a wondrous new vitality and creativity to all that you do. 

Every moment there is a possibility to be total. Whatsoever you are doing, be absorbed in it so utterly that the mind thinks nothing, is just there, is just a presence. And more and more totality will be coming. And the taste of totality will make you more and more capable of being total. And try to see when you are not total. Those are the moments which have to be dropped slowly, slowly. When you are not total, whenever you are in the head—thinking, brooding, calculating, cunning, clever—you are not total. Slowly, slowly slip out of those moments. It is just an old habit. Habits die hard. But they die certainly—if one persists, they die.”

What I notice within this, is that whatever it is I am looking at doing to ‘get my power back’ and make myself ‘feel right’ about the thing/situation, is that I feel stressed. I certainly don't feel anything like "playful and free, yet alert and interdependent.” Like I’m torn inside myself with, ‘is this the thing that is going to get me my power back?’ I feel torn and stressed and unsure of what I am choosing to do. This is what tells me that my starting point is off. How I am approaching the situation is off. 

Within this, looking at the experience of stress within myself, I realized that I am not considering myself as the Totality of all there is, of myself as existence, within this Trusting myself as all of existence to walk the greater process we are all walking, and to approach things from that starting point of trusting in myself and life. Why would I feel any stress if I am all of existence and all of existence is me? Why am I not within myself rather expressing myself within the ‘playfulness’ of realizing that I am everything, I am not separate from anyone and so why would I feel this stress, like there is something/someone in existence that I am creating a relationship toward, desiring another in this existence to act or do something in some way to make me feel better? Feeling like there is something I must do or say because I do not trust things to work out in this moment of feeling like I ‘must do something’. Trying to look at it from that mind place as the card says of “thinking, brooding, calculating, cunning, clever” – trying to figure out how/what to do/say in order to change something or someone ‘out there’. To get some kind of result that will satisfy me, but not really me, my mind as how I’ve interpreted myself as lacking, as requiring a certain kind of outcome or behavior in order for me to feel secure, to feel alright.

Another point that came through from this card was that while I am busy brooding over this issue, there are three very REAL women in my life right now, like on the card. There are two women who have come into my life to live together with me within the starting point of dedicating ourselves to creating a world that is best for all life, and there is myself making three. Everything starts with self, all my relationships are a reflection of my relationship with myself, and so from that perspective I am the most important woman in my life to focus on, in ensuring who I am and what I am living is that which is best for all life, and that my relationships reflect that as well. This is what I would like the starting point of the relationships I focus on to be. Not focusing on others in my mind or ‘out there’ from an unclear starting point based in the Self Interest of the mind, but rather focusing on all my relationships are based on what is best for all Life, whether it’s those living with me in my day to day reality, or those I speak to in the ethers of the internet.

And within this it’s to be “playful and free, yet alert and interdependent”, not stressed and thinking and brooding. Whether it’s with these women in my life, or anyone in my life, or toward anything at all. There is no point to stressing and thinking, and so I know when I’m experiencing this, it is simply “an old habit” that I am slipping out of and if I persist, it will die. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to waste time in thinking and brooding and worrying about what to do/say to another in order to fix/change/correct a situation that is really coming from reactions in my mind and seeking to change my experience in my mind of which I am actually the directive principle and no one else can take responsibility for.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from others and want to say something to them that will produce a result that will satisfy myself as the mind which is not going to lead to any real solutions or any real self satisfaction as who I am as life.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the relationships that I seek out from a mind starting point as self interest will lead to harm to others, not harmony on earth.

I commit myself to ensure that I am only constructing relationships within the starting point of what is best for all life and that this is my approach with any interaction that I engage in.