Let’s Take a Valentine’s Day Mini-Vacay!!!
My friend Neal gave me this nugget: “What would it feel like if everything were okay?” Meaning, like, what would it feel like in my body, belly, head and inner bodybrainsoul palace if - IF - everything were okay just as it is?
It’s a big kind of ask for the imagination, to be willing to even suspend, just for fun, just for a moment or hour, the belief that everything is not okay as it is. Like I’d wait on the phone for hours and hours and spend all kinds of money to take a “real” trip, but just change my mind channel right here right now? Hmmm.
And so I could totally follow that resistance and totally make a list with you of all the not-okaynesses big and small in my current awareness — big things like poverty, sickness, political stuff, global warming, and small stuff the fact that bread upsets my stomach, non-toxic sunscreen gives me zits, Brownie has burrs in her butt — the list of not-okaynesses could go on and on forever and ever. My brain loves to make lists like that and then generate plots for improvement and plans to execute the plots for improvement and then generate options to optimize the execution of the plans of the plots to improve and then improve the improvements and on and on and more and more. Wheeeeee!!!!!
And then, there’s this other experiment I’ve been willing to give a whirl, which is to allow my brain to flex just a bit where it’s not so used to flexing, to exercise a different way and focus in on the bodily sensation of safety, of being at peace and ease and comfort as if — as it would if — everything were okay just as it is.
As if I were we were just floating in some kind of amniotic okayness, where all our sensations were pleasantly muted, pleasantly warm, fed, fulfilled, sated. And then breathe into that in and out and repeat in that lovely spot that’s available, pre-reserved just for me how I like it.
And then that’s the whole deal. I get to get to know that place a little better each time I visit, the longer I stay. And each time I take a mini-vacay like that and the world doesn’t end it gives me a little bit of license to do it again, on purpose, on my own.
And I’ve found that yes it is possible to be there in that golden pink sunrise sunset landscape - the magic hour, the mini-vacay - on the inside, while being somewhere entirely else on the outside. And so I get to practice that skill as if it were a worthy goal to feel okay even when that list still exists. And then somehow I have more choices about where I want to spend my time and energy, how I want to be in the world, which is cool. I’m gonna keep going.
www.livingeveryminuteofit.com
www.combatcovidstress.com
Neal Allen: https://www.shapesoftruth.com
