Prison Break

"If all I have is my conditioning, then how can I respond to what each moment is calling for?"

--Shayla Wright

My good friend and teacher Shayla is offering a course that she calls Mutual Evolution, in which we are invited to rest in a paradox.

We are constantly evolving as human beings. There is virtually no way not to change in our human lives. Even if we feel "stuck," the qualities of that very stuckness are changing in each moment.

As conditioned humans, we like to think we can change by making goals for ourselves, and yet any goal that we come up with is a concept, a thought. And those thoughts limit us. Maybe, for example, we want to be more loving. There's nothing wrong with this, but there are times when life will require a response that does not fit with that concept of loving, that might feel fierce and even unloving in the moment.

Can you see how the goal, then, can get in the way of what is required? We will either try to gloss over the requirement of the moment, because it does not fit with our concept of being loving, or we will meet the moment exactly where it is, and feel bad because we did not meet our goal.

There's another way. Instead of building a prison of goals and requirements, we can open to all our possibilities. We can rest in not knowing what is best, and trust that we will do what is called for.

We can also find others who are looking to break out of this prison of conditioned thought. And together, we can support each other's efforts to see that we made the prison, that we hold the key, that we are already free.

This is what Shayla is offering. The possibility that we can best improve by seeing there is no need to do so.

Jeff