Have you ever contemplated putting down the burden of not liking?
A burden you have carried for so long,
You have forgotten that you have been carrying it.
Most of the time,
There seems to be a routine natural unease that is joined to us like a shadow.
Not a shadow of physical light,
But one of spiritual light.
This moment,
Right now,
As you are listening,
Is there any sense of not liking?
It might not like the content.
It might be the temperature in the room,
The lighting,
The gnawing hunger for some food or other stimulation.
Not liking sits there lurking in the background and prodding us into further action or into further inaction.
What if you were to put down,
Let go of any and all not liking for just a moment?
What might that feel like?
How do you do that?
How do you put something down?
Perhaps it may be easier to contemplate letting go rather than putting down.
How do you let go of a thought?
What lets go?
It may feel like giving in.
Imagine you are on a diet and you have not had ice cream for a few days.
You see ice cream in the freezer and you contemplate diet or ice cream.
On a whim,
You give in and take out the ice cream.
Back up just a moment.
Go into the sensation of giving in.
You know you can do it.
There is a softening,
A relaxation somewhere around your belly or your heart.
Once you find your awareness into this area,
You can relax more easily into it at will.
When standing in the light of the sun,
We feel its warmth and cast a shadow of less light.
When standing in the brilliance of spiritual light,
We feel it as happiness.
When we are too constricted or contracted,
We block out some of the brilliance of the spiritual light and instead live in its shadow.
It is this shadow that casts the sense of unease.
The unease can be felt as lightly as the unnoticed hum of a refrigerator until it suddenly stops.
Or a slight headache that wasn't there a moment ago but is now.
If you look under the unease,
There is usually a reference to a remembered event of the past or an assumed event of the future.
The thinking mind stretches its tentacles of influence onto areas of the brain and glands of the body to create molecules of emotion.
The molecules set off sensations within the body that are associated with either ease or unease.
The good news is that we can,
By using the higher mind,
Cultivate the ability to guide the brain to release more of the good molecules,
More of those than any other kind.
Everything keeps changing,
Starting and stopping like the weather.
Something's faster than the other.
Letting go something now is just making a choice for something to stop sooner rather than later.
I'm fortunate to live in South Florida where the weather changes sometimes even before the forecast is over.
The quick,
Natural changing weather has set a wonderful example for me.
What may be helpful is to remember that even the unwanted thoughts are just as impermanent as the ones you like.
