Sunday 5 September 2010

Going With The Flow

It has been a couple of weeks since I last posted on the blog. The main reason for this is a spell of retreat and contemplation; reflecting on life, the universe and most things in between (well, that’s what Libran’s tend to do!).

This summer has been somewhat intense and challenging for so many of us, our paths have been littered with challenges and issues to resolve. Maybe one of the strongest themes is connected to ‘going with the flow’. Whilst we may know how we want to move our lives forwards, we have to wait for the right time, and trying to push ahead against the current will only exhaust and frustrate us (and not to mention create anxiety and panic within some).

Yet, going with the flow is much harder than it sounds. How many of us can truly let go of the steering wheel of our lives and trust that the current will carry us to where we need to be? How many of us can stop thinking, analysing and trying to understand the meanings of our experiences rather than just simply being in the moment? How many of us continually berate and beat ourselves up for not being better or doing more? And how many of us stay paralysed in indecision, because we cannot be sure which is the best path to follow as we cannot know what lies ahead (and wait for a guarantee to land in our laps)?

Surrendering to the flow of life is not about giving up but it is about having faith, belief and trust. Once again though, just how easy is it to live these qualities with the worries of day to day life all around us?

In many ways, the need to surrender or ‘go with the flow’ goes much deeper than the realities of our physical worlds. It is about our cores, the centre of our being, that place deep within where our ‘higher selves’ reside. Our higher selves are wise and removed from ego and the stress of day to day life. In this place we can release conditioning, negative thought processes and trauma, and feel truly free and alive.

Once we can truly go with the flow at this place deep within, the stress of our physical realities becomes far less stressful and infinitely more manageable. In many ways, our perspective shifts enabling us to see life differently and to realise that we can find paths of far less resistance in life if we believe that they exist.

One of the biggest pressures that many of us place on ourselves is the need to succeed and the need to be great. We are all great, but the pressure that drives so many of us is the drive towards perfection. Of course, working towards perfection is part of the human condition, but it is the journey that is far more important than the destination. Perfection is possibly never achievable as we all continually strive to move goal posts and to keep reaching for something more.

So, what should we strive towards? Maybe it should be simpler and more tangible? Maybe we should simply strive to be the best that we can be? Some days this might parallel ‘perfection’, other days we might fall far short of this, but if we are truly being the best that we can be, surely it doesn’t matter?

By being the best that we can be and going with the flow (trusting, believing and having faith) we start to let go of the stress, anxiety and worries that we all carry around with us like a large rucksack full of rocks bearing down on our shoulders. We start to feel more flexible and freer to live, breath and exist.

In this powerful space within, our lives fall into sharper focus. Un-important goals slide away and clarity allows us to see how we can progress in life. Those guarantees we seek seem less significant as we can ‘feel’ or intuitively know that we are on the right path, making the right decisions. In short, the forces that create stress and anxiety lose their power as we reside in stillness, peace, clarity and faith.

So, by taking a step back, going within and surrendering to the flow; we can each start to regain a sense of balance, harmony and focus in life...