Let it Be, Let it Be

Bill and I are traveling in Italy. Today we had the supreme challenge of finding the train station in the busy city of Torino and once there, the location of the rental car return. While Bill drove, I used the GPS in my phone but I often find it less than clear. Adding to the tension was attempting to negotiate all this while trying to find the right street sign in the midst of so many signs and sharing the road with Italian drivers who are always in a hurry and never more so than when flying around those pesky roundabouts!

Rental car successfully returned, we enter the train station and proceed to buy tickets to travel to Cannes, France. The line was long and the train was leaving in 40 minutes. Would we make it? Was it possible?

What the situation caused me to remember is that life is unfolding as it should be and I am not in charge.

Early on in my spiritual work, I was taught to choose whatever is happening in the moment. It is what is supposed to be or it would not be happening. This is not always easy and I don’t always remember to do it but when I do, my stress level goes way down and my wellbeing goes up.

If we were able to buy the tickets in time to board the next train, then that’s as it should be. If not, then there must be a good reason why. Perhaps missing the train would save us a problem further down the road, er, tracks.

This week marks the anniversary of 9/11 and I am reminded of the many stories of people who escaped death because they missed their train or their alarm didn’t go off. Life will unfold as it does and any illusion we have of control is just that—an illusion.

What situations are you trying to control that cannot be?

  • What others think of you?
  • The physical or emotional health of a loved one?
  • Whether others like your political candidate?

I am consistently amazed by what we allow to upset our wellbeing.  I am on Face Book several times a week and, on a venue that could be and is used for so much good, there is hatred being spewed about things we really have no control over.

We have a learned response to situations we don’t like that causes us to push hard against them. If that made anything better, I would say, “Push away”! The irony is that, the more we push against something, the more of it we attract.

In my early twenties, I was an activist working with thousands of others in every state to get the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution passed. We failed abysmally. Now that I am aware of how the Law of Attraction works, I realize that my efforts helped bring about that failure. How? The entire time I was working for this cause, I was angry and pushing against what I thought was wrong. I wasn’t moving toward equality for women, I was trying to push away inequality. My focus was on inequality and we still have it today.

The Law of Attraction works like this: you attract more of what you focus on.

If there is a cause you feel passionately about then use the Law of Attraction to help you. If, for example, you want your presidential candidate to win then it is important to focus on the virtues he has that make you to want to vote for him, rather than attacking his opponent. Ironically, the more you resist the idea of a candidate becoming president, the more likely it is to happen. The “side” that wins this election will be the one whose members are focusing on their candidate’s qualities versus his opponent’s lack thereof.

I don’t know about you but I seem destined to repeat this lesson over and over:  the only thing I can control is my response to circumstances.  When I do remember, life gets much easier, no matter what’s happening (including politics).

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