Relax into Life. Stay Open

The purpose of Life is love.  God is love.

Michael A. Singer

I get Charlie Horses all the time and they can be nasty.  I used to dread them. As soon as I felt the tensing up in my arch and the spreading a part of the toes I would shout out, "Oh no!It is happening again."  My entire body would tense up as the pain crept up from my foot, all the way up to my hip.   In reaction I would jump up and stamp and stamp my foot against the ground in hope that it would put this internal fire out. It never did. My reaction only intensified the pain. I judged it all as excruciating, a painful squeeze from life and it felt that way...lasting up to thirty minutes at a time. 

Hmm!  I used to react that way to Charlie Horses.  I don't anymore.  In this new commitment I have to allowing things "out there" to be as they are as I do the inner work of not closing....I am learning to handle my Charlie Horses, and I am learning to handle life. When I feel that initial tightening in the soul of my foot now, indicating that a spasm is about to happen...instead of resisting it and reacting to it...I gently tell myself to relax....just relax.  I take a deep breath in  and I breathe out...again and again, focusing on the belly rising on the in breath, falling on the out.  The pain  remains but it is almost as if it is in the background of my awareness.  I am more focused on awareness and non resistance in those moments than I am on the pain...it is like the pain is in the distance.  These Charlie Horses only last a few seconds now.  They come into my experience, are experienced, then they are gone.  I don't cling to them anymore as I did when I resisted them.  They simply are...neither good or bad; right or wrong; should be or shouldn't be.  And that makes all the difference

We need to take this approach in response to whatever life gives us.  Relax into it and allow it to be what it is. 

When we do this we are not closing...we are not blocking the flow of Shakti through us.  We keep the peace flowing.  Of course, we also have some work to do in recognizing and then allowing all the stored stuff from our past to come up...all that trapped emotional energy that kept the Shakti from flowing freely, that led to all this emotional turmoil we tend to experience from taking over our lives. When we practice with the small stuff like Charlie Horses...we come to see how relaxing into what is, is the answer.  The less we put on top of our buried stuff, the more room it has to come up on its own.  With each release we will feel freer and freer, more connected to the Love that is our purpose, more connected to God.  

All is well.

Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe ( December 24, 2023) How Not to Close.  https://tou.org/talks/