Mary O’Malley – If you could watch the storyteller in your head that talks all day long, rather than identifying with it, you would see that it truly believes it has to do life and do it right – even being in the now! So it plans, judges, fixes, trying to get rid of what it doesn’t like and get to what it does. As you step back and watch all of the busyness, you can see clearly it is simply struggle. And that struggle cuts you off from being fully alive.
What would happen if you KNEW that life was in charge of life and it was SAFE to relax into the flow, knowing that life was giving you the exact set of experiences you need in order to become free of your mind’s addiction to struggle?
To trust life, even the difficult parts, is the opposite of how our minds work. It is almost blasphemy to even suggest the truth that our lives are for us. But your mind is such a small part of who you really are, and as you discover how to have more and more space around your struggling mind, the more you make contact with the creative flow of life. And the more you make contact, the more you relax into the flow and reconnect with the joy and the wonder of being alive.
I was first opened to this truth in my early twenties when I was lost in struggle and my Mother sent me a poem called ‘No Other Way.’
No Other Way – by Martha Smock
Could we but see the pattern of our days,
We should discern how devious were the ways
By which we came to this, the present time,
This place in life; and we should see the climb
Our soul has made up through the years.
We should forget the hurts, the wanderings, the fears,
The wastelands of our life, and know
That we could come no other way or grow
Into our good without these steps our feet
Found hard to take, our faith found hard to meet.
The road of life winds on, and we like travelers go
From turn to turn until we come to know
The truth that life is endless and that we
Forever are inhabitants of all eternity.
For me, it was like a ray of sunshine in a very dark time. What I heard was that I can trust my journey, and I can also know, deeply know, that I wasn’t bad or wrong for having such darkness in my life. It also slowly dawned on me what she said at the end of the poem – that who we really are – the field of awareness that all thoughts, feelings and sensations are passing through – is who we really are. And it lasts, even beyond our death.
This poem also opened me to the truth that we have all wandered and have gotten lost. We have all known fear and wastelands, and we have all been deeply hurt, deeply wounded, deeply confused. It is just part of the human experience. What would happen if you knew that all of it – the pain, the hurt, the wounding, the confusion – was for you? Knowing life is for you allows you to unhook from your addiction to struggle so you can actually be here for life – not an idea of it – but the real thing.
In this moment, as you are reading, soften your belly and relax into this moment – the only moment that matters. And know that no matter what your life looks like right now, the creative flow that is life is bringing you home, moment by moment, experience by experience.
SF Source Mary O’Malley Aug 2021