In some real and strange way, it is so much easier for me to hold on that it is to let go. Constriction is so much more familiar and comfortable that softening and surrendering.
A few weeks ago, in the midst of a round of 2:15-3:45 a.m. sleeplessness, I just happened to notice my body. I was lying there, safe in my little bed, completely tensed up! I was literally a ball of tightness. I hardly noticed…….. but then I did. I used breath and prayer to start relaxing but, phew–it was work.
I guess the fact that I’m noticing…..that would be the good news, right?
I’m so aware of my process of holding on, in the off the mat situation of releasing my book into the world. It is so profoundly uncomfortable to have to let go of it, concentric circle and concentric circle of letting go.
I love writing–I love being all submersed in the project, all thinking about it and considering it, all wrapped up, in a sense, in the tension of focused creation. And now, the surrender into marketing. Marketing is not even a fair word–I am social media phobic and technologically challenged–marketing hardly speaks to my carrying books to the Kripalu Shop and saying, “Thank you.”
So what am I surrendering Not Over Yet into?
I surrender into: complete lack of control, other people’s judgment, my own feelings of emptiness and self-doubt.
That’s a pretty sobering list. Damn.
Well, I choose to practice letting go. I choose to practice feeling my feelings. I choose to practice the belief that they way out of the feelings is through the feelings.
Okay, then.
I choose to practice.
