Waking Up in a Busy World: A Bucket of Ping Pong Balls?

Love is your natural state.

Michael A. Singer

I think, most of the time, I am at the point where I have changed one mantra for another. I went from repeating to myself over and over: "I don't want to feel it" to "I am willing to feel and experience it all"

It isn't easy. I still stumble and fall on this path. I trip over my own feet lol. Yet, I am committed to getting back up and saying to the universe, "Bring it on." And the universe, it seems, is kindly obliging. :) I am committed to my practice of "using Life properly", for the evolution of my soul and not the feeding of my ego. I must stress, it isn't a perfect practice. :)

What helps me to keep going is knowing that love is my natural state, and this "discontent" I often feel, isn't. My discontent is a product of a personal mind that can never be satisfied enough. It is creating samskaras that block this natural love flow in me...in all of us. So, I just need to get rid of that which blocks in order to experience this natural light and love of who I am. I want to attain a state that never goes away no matter what is happening to me or around me. Wouldn't that be the thing to ask for rather than for all the things out there to defy statistical probability and be exactly the way we need them to be to serve the mess inside?? Yeah, I believe it is the way to go.

So, we need to cleanse...purify...get rid of all our samskaras.

An Analogy about Samskaras

I heard an analogy recently (and I can't remember where I heard it to cite it...forgive me) about our inner worlds, our personal minds, our psyches being like a big bucket of balls. I am going to use that and add my own twists to it.

In that bucket we have many balls of three different colours...white for neutral, red for negative, yellow for positive. Each ball is something we picked up from the external world...an experience, a memory, a belief, or an emotion of some kind we clung to. We picked up the ball and we stuffed it into our bucket becasue we didn't know what else to do with it. We now have a bucket full of ping pong balls. Life comes along and triggers us and we automatically reach in for a ball to explain our experience, tell us what to do and how to deal with it. In a sense, the ball is our instructor or our reactive tendency.

The red balls seem to be much more numerous than the yellow and even though we have picked up hundreds more white balls they just seem to pop right out once they hit the bottom of the bucket. Only a few remain. Since red balls, the negative experiences we didn't throw away but cling to in our resistance, are more numerous the probablity is that when life triggers us we will pull out a red ball. We will likely react mentally, emotionally, energetically and behaviourally in a negative way. Our reaction will lead to us adding more red balls to our bucket thus increasing the chance that the next time we reach in we will pull out another red ball. We will do it again and again and again.

This bucket, this psyche, this idea of "me" with its collection of stored experiences is just a bucket of ping pong balls. Yet, it is in the way of us experiencing who we truly are. We are so busy reaching in and reacting accordingly that we identify as the bucket and not that being who is dragging around this bucket.

Our goal, ultimately, is to put the bucket down and "be" without it. That, though, is the end result of a process that goes a little like this:

recognize that you are carrying around a bucket
recognize that you are stuffing and storing experiences
recognize that most of the things you do, say, feel, and think today in response to what Life gives you is a result of this bucket you keep reaching into.
Examine the bucket: have a good look at the contents of that bucket...see how many red balls you have in there and how you tend to keep pulling those ones out
Do your best to decrease the probability of pulling out red balls everytime you reach in by adding more yellow balls . Purposefully add yellow (positivity) to the mixture.
At the same time, be mindful and observe how the white balls just go in and out...know that is what all balls ( all life experiences, all relationships, all thoughts and feelings) are suppose to do...touch the bottom and bounce right back out.
Recognize that all balls are originally white...it was you that painted some red and some yellow with your preferring. Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so. (Hamlet)
Know that the bucket is meant to be empty and spacious so experiences can just bounce in and bounce out
Know that spaciousness inside the bucket is full of the light energy of love, peace , and joy that wants to just rise to the top and spill over...it can't do that when the bucket is full of balls.
So, stop picking up balls and painting them colours...stop storing balls...stop clinging...let all balls bounce in and bounce out.
While you are doing that...get rid of all balls already in that bucket. Just allow them to come out...turn the bucket upside down if you must but empty your bucket!!!
Keep your bucket clean and empty. (Don't put more in!)
Recognize that you are not the bucket you are holding...you are simply the one holding it. The energy you observe in the bucket is actually in you and everything.
Put the bucket down and experience being that energy.