No Plan is the best Plan
"We easily confuse plans with planning, dreams with dreaming and love with loving."
From: The Book of Awakening" Mark Nepo
Buddhist say "to be a good fisherman you must detach yourself from the fish"
I am so impressed with Mark Nepo and his Book of Awakening partially because of the wisdoms that he derives his work from and the wisdom in his heart. I feel like he is a man that I would love as a freind and honor as person but mostly has helped me understand that cancer is not my death sentence but rather the road I was on was. He has taught me through his experience with cancer and talking about it occassionally that I am surely not alone and that anything is possible. Like the huge laughter I shared with my sister today about toilet paper if one could even fathom that thought. She was complaining that she loved everything about my home except the "cheap toilet paper". Ironically I did not purchase it but then again the whole thought around it made us crack up. Me calling her out and her calling me out since as I put it I no longer have an "asshole". You had to have been there.
So going back to this idea of being a good fisherman by not focusing on the fish enlightened me and asked me to write this blog about (not toilet paper) but how we plan and plan and want to make the outcome happen when we can most times just sit back and allow it to happen by doing the first part and letting the rest settle itself. We confuse love with loving really means that we don't just love naturally and allow it to flow but rather force it out. We are so desperate to be loved we want to make it happen as if it were so simple. We confuse the action with the reality. The reality with the action of when sometimes we have nothing to do but wait and go about our business. Live our life, enjoy the minute at hand and allow love and plans to unfold organically as one might say.
I have a friend who is a Buddhist and she seems so happy all the time. Like me she has what they call cancer and what I am starting to think is just an opportunity for her and I to live more fully. So far both of us have lived with it for ten years in total, me without knowing it as the toxins ran up and down my body and had a game with me. The real point of this philosophy is that we don't have to force the fish to bite, they will or they won't and if we are completely focused on the fish we won't even enjoy the actual activity of fishing and the serenity it allows us to have as well as the long talks with the ones we love who may be fishing along with us. My friend she has a way with words and what she says cracks me up at times. She has the best sense of humor this Buddhist artist goddess girl, my soul sister. She dances on top of the cancer and she laughs at it while my other girlfriend cannot wait to "get it over with". Every one of us is different yet the reality is that we cannot change the outcome by planning it neccessarily at least not every time in every instance. Sometimes we have to surrender and let the baloon blow up or fly up and let it go thinking it will land somewhere where we will find it.
Some people that I knew at one time in my life thought love was loving and plans were planning and that he or she had to control the outcome. Some feel like famous celebrities because they had an illness and someone gave them all this attention for being sick. Attention they needed in order to plan their life and even then they did not plan anything because plans were made for them and they were only in a dream, thinking they were dreaming. He or she knows what I mean and needless to say the need to get attention gets fulfilled by people like this who just need it. They believe that plans come from planning and life comes from their magical schedule. They schedule everything in their life so as to stay busy and not feel the feelings.
So what is this idea of taking our fishing pole and going to the lake and just relaxing? What is that weird concept for some of us? Why is that so strange to some folks and was for me at one time? It is about controlling the outcome and trying to force it when it does not have to be that way. We can just allow things to flow. Some of my best moments in life have not been plannned and in fact this has happened three times this week alone and it's only Wednesday. I cannot wait to see what will happen tomorrow without my ever thinking about a plan one bit or for one second. Without having someone make me a schedule thinking he or she was doing me a favor. Without me getting in my own way. It is an exciting prospect this idea of fishing just to fish, living just to live and loving just to love or being a nutty laughing mess with your sister in the living room lounged on slipcovered white sofas like we were crazy.
From: The Book of Awakening" Mark Nepo
Buddhist say "to be a good fisherman you must detach yourself from the fish"
I am so impressed with Mark Nepo and his Book of Awakening partially because of the wisdoms that he derives his work from and the wisdom in his heart. I feel like he is a man that I would love as a freind and honor as person but mostly has helped me understand that cancer is not my death sentence but rather the road I was on was. He has taught me through his experience with cancer and talking about it occassionally that I am surely not alone and that anything is possible. Like the huge laughter I shared with my sister today about toilet paper if one could even fathom that thought. She was complaining that she loved everything about my home except the "cheap toilet paper". Ironically I did not purchase it but then again the whole thought around it made us crack up. Me calling her out and her calling me out since as I put it I no longer have an "asshole". You had to have been there.
So going back to this idea of being a good fisherman by not focusing on the fish enlightened me and asked me to write this blog about (not toilet paper) but how we plan and plan and want to make the outcome happen when we can most times just sit back and allow it to happen by doing the first part and letting the rest settle itself. We confuse love with loving really means that we don't just love naturally and allow it to flow but rather force it out. We are so desperate to be loved we want to make it happen as if it were so simple. We confuse the action with the reality. The reality with the action of when sometimes we have nothing to do but wait and go about our business. Live our life, enjoy the minute at hand and allow love and plans to unfold organically as one might say.
I have a friend who is a Buddhist and she seems so happy all the time. Like me she has what they call cancer and what I am starting to think is just an opportunity for her and I to live more fully. So far both of us have lived with it for ten years in total, me without knowing it as the toxins ran up and down my body and had a game with me. The real point of this philosophy is that we don't have to force the fish to bite, they will or they won't and if we are completely focused on the fish we won't even enjoy the actual activity of fishing and the serenity it allows us to have as well as the long talks with the ones we love who may be fishing along with us. My friend she has a way with words and what she says cracks me up at times. She has the best sense of humor this Buddhist artist goddess girl, my soul sister. She dances on top of the cancer and she laughs at it while my other girlfriend cannot wait to "get it over with". Every one of us is different yet the reality is that we cannot change the outcome by planning it neccessarily at least not every time in every instance. Sometimes we have to surrender and let the baloon blow up or fly up and let it go thinking it will land somewhere where we will find it.
Some people that I knew at one time in my life thought love was loving and plans were planning and that he or she had to control the outcome. Some feel like famous celebrities because they had an illness and someone gave them all this attention for being sick. Attention they needed in order to plan their life and even then they did not plan anything because plans were made for them and they were only in a dream, thinking they were dreaming. He or she knows what I mean and needless to say the need to get attention gets fulfilled by people like this who just need it. They believe that plans come from planning and life comes from their magical schedule. They schedule everything in their life so as to stay busy and not feel the feelings.
So what is this idea of taking our fishing pole and going to the lake and just relaxing? What is that weird concept for some of us? Why is that so strange to some folks and was for me at one time? It is about controlling the outcome and trying to force it when it does not have to be that way. We can just allow things to flow. Some of my best moments in life have not been plannned and in fact this has happened three times this week alone and it's only Wednesday. I cannot wait to see what will happen tomorrow without my ever thinking about a plan one bit or for one second. Without having someone make me a schedule thinking he or she was doing me a favor. Without me getting in my own way. It is an exciting prospect this idea of fishing just to fish, living just to live and loving just to love or being a nutty laughing mess with your sister in the living room lounged on slipcovered white sofas like we were crazy.
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