elainegrey

I wrote to someone that i was hoping i would learn to carry things more lightly. It's a paradoxical image: it's not the carrying that's light or heavy but the thing being carried, right? Yet the burden of a concern, a worry, an emotional reaction isn't some fixed characteristic: the effect of carrying a concern is a dynamic relationship between the mind-body system and the abstract thing. One *can* worry one's self sick, and one can take the same concern and learn to "carry it lightly." From the Christian tradition, there's the serenity prayer. From Pop Christianity, "let go and let God." The Buddhist tradition has a strong focus on making the shift away from suffering. I suspect there are productivity experts who have their own frame for this.*

Right now, i'm going to think of it as carrying things lightly. (It's surely not original, but i can't identify the source(s).)

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I think the quality Friends refer to "clearness" really helps one carry things lightly. There's an issue that i keep addressing with inaction. I think i need to ask for help in clearness over this because every time the issue comes to my attention, i question my inaction. I also feel less than competent at discerning what the right action is. Driving to work this morning i realized that i did have a resource to help me work through this: i may contact the resource tonight or tomorrow morning.

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It occurs to me that last night -- i think it was last night -- i fell asleep imagining that i was smashing the earthen oven (an adobe horno) that i have been visualizing when contemplating fire energy. Yes, the oven was a way to envision both the creative and destructive aspects of fire energy; yes, it seemed nicely domestic, in the same way as i envisioned clearing a hillside seep to make a little grotto where the water bubbled up, (that a metaphor for the energy which refreshes and replenishes me). But, no. As i was dozing off, i was taken with the sense that the stove tamed that energy too much. Smash, smash. I'm not sure what comes next. More transformation?

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Yipee! Work has a subscription to the *full* Safari Online. I promptly read the next chapter in Mind Performance Hacks, something i left off in 2007 or so. Chapter 3, on creativity, was interesting but generally not addressing a problem i'm worried about solving. (I am more interested in filtering the creative ideas to work on what is going to be most renewing/rewarding.)

SInce i was at All Consuming, i removed Letters Across the Divide: Two Friends Explore Racism, Friendship, and Faith by David Anderson from my list. I wish All Consuming let you mark something as abandoned, not simply making it disappear when you choose to "give up."

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* Oh look, "Hack 30. Hold a Question in Mind"

When we get frustrated, we are usually in a complex situation. Questions regularly have complicated answers, and it's not unusual that we find ourselves lost in complexities. But complexities can be frustrating.

Confidence and believing that an answer will come can help cut through all that. This hack is simple. By reminding yourself that "all you have to do" is hold the question in mind, you can relax, perhaps put active investigation (or worry) on hold, and let the mind and the world do whatever it needs to do to help you answer the question. Don't give up on the question, but, rather, just look at the world freshly, holding the question in mind. Sometimes just that little bit of relaxation helps a lot.