The relief of being ordinary,
Welcome.
For these next few minutes there's nothing you need to do and there's nothing you need to become.
You don't need to strive,
You don't need to figure anything out,
You don't need to improve yourself.
For now,
The invitation is to gently lay that all down.
The striving,
Comparing,
Evaluating and the managing.
Put it all down.
It's like an armor that you've worn to protect yourself or a mask that you've worn to be seen in a certain way.
The adornments and decorations and all the ways you've tried to present yourself to the world and to yourself.
All of it can rest for now.
It's like taking off a costume or a suit of armor.
It's all held in place,
Sometimes to protect you and sometimes to present an image but you can take it off now.
It's heavy,
Clumsy,
False.
It's what's beneath that we're interested in.
To start loosening the strings and the buckles.
Take off the helmet,
The protective metal.
Put down the shield,
The sword.
Feel the relief of that and as you take it off,
Feel the relief as the air touches parts of you that have been concealed and how light that feels.
Put down that weight,
That shell.
What a relief.
Tension softens and the breath can move a little more freely and the weight that you hadn't realized you were carrying begins to release.
Because here there's nothing to defend,
There's nothing to prove or become.
There's just the simplicity of this body,
This breath,
This moment.
You see,
It's already complete.
You are already complete and it's so ordinary and it's so plain.
So what remains here without all the effort?
When you simply allow yourself to rest and do nothing,
What do you find?
The breath moving in and out.
The body is allowed to rest in its own weight.
Sensations appearing and disappearing.
Sounds arising and passing.
There's just experience as it is.
Immediate,
Unforced,
Simple.
So close,
So familiar.
There's nothing to add or remove.
And don't try to understand this.
It's not to be understood.
You don't need that additional mechanism of concepts and thought and understanding and getting it.
It's not about that.
It's before that,
Prior to any of that.
That beneath all the striving and the doing and the becoming lies a kind of honesty,
A realness,
A fullness.
It's quiet,
It's unapologetic,
It's present.
And you know what else is already here?
Peace.
The peace that remains here.
The ease.
And this may be the very thing that you've been chasing all along.
It's not something to achieve or something to reach.
It's been quietly waiting and it's revealed only when the chase is put down.
So simple.
And it's so simple that the mind cannot comprehend it.
Because the mind works in concepts.
It imagines and then sets in motion a plan to get somewhere.
Somewhere else,
Some time else,
To something else.
And yet,
What is being pointed to is already here.
Breath.
Temperature.
The sounds.
The smells.
This experience.
It's always been here.
How can you possibly expect to find it?
You see,
Trying to find it creates an illusion that it's already lost.
And it is this illusion that separates us.
That's all.
So,
Just stop.
And as you rest here,
Notice.
Undo.
The relief and the peace of being ordinary.
You might find in this space or this willingness of being ordinary that there is a peace,
A freedom,
A liberation.
And in that peace and that freedom,
There's a kind of strength,
Fullness,
Aliveness.
You might just get a taste of that.
But you have to keep letting go.
You have to keep relaxing.
Letting go.
Stop looking.
Stop searching.
As soon as there's an ounce of effort,
It's lost.
What would it be like to show up in your life?
In your work?
In your relationships?
Your conversations and decisions?
As an expression to live from this simple,
Quiet realness.
This natural,
Grounded being.
What would it be like to live from this place?
It's not fragile.
It's not special.
Simply present.
But in its plainness,
It's deeply complete.
So now,
Gently,
Slowly,
Without any rush,
Just start to integrate this into your surroundings once again.
Begin to notice the sounds around you,
The light in the room,
The simple act of being here.
Bring a bit of movement to your fingers.
Rolling your shoulders.
Taking a deeper breath.
And there's no rush.
But I invite you to consider what if you tried less?
What if what you've been efforting for is some kind of goal or attainment or some kind of imagined life that everything's gonna be okay when you have achieved all you want to achieve?
Well then what?
Well,
What if there's an abundance and completeness that's already here,
All the time,
In every moment?
So as you continue into your day,
Allow this quiet realness to walk with you.
And starting to learn that it's not something to hold on to or something to protect.
It's simply what remains when nothing needs to be added.
It's plain.
It's ordinary.
It's present and complete.
So thank you for practicing.
May you be safe.
May you be well.
And may you have ease of being.
