Sometimes, I believe that everything wants a piece of me - is trying to steal from me my peace. I am very sensitive to the demands of kids, of dog, of house, of job, of friends, of family, of lover, of traffic, of stomach, of exercise....I find myself getting so sick of having to be responsible for anything at all.
If I take a step back, however, I realize that none of these elements in my life have anything to do with the pressure that I experience in relation to them. The truth is, the enemy of peace uses these elements to remove me from a relationship with the source of peace in every moment of every day. Who hasn't been alone with no duty in particular on the docket and felt the sudden compulsion to do something - anything - to avoid that moment with oneself? Why? Because in that quiet moment alone, this enemy of peace knows you may discover its true nature and workings in you, and so it sends you running again after the next thing you need to do to claim this ever-elusive peace.
The pressure I feel over the "demands" of life does not belong to the responsibilities themselves, but to my desire to be in control, to take care of everything myself because I believe that I am the only one who can do anything the right way and I am the one who will make or break the happiness and contentment and peace of another. What a tremendous and arrogant burden that is. What's worse, such a mistaken idea actually hands me over into the hands of irresponsibility as eventually the pressure overloads the senses and I snap at someone I love, I withdraw from those I love, or I succumb to the lie that there is too much to do and so do nothing. Moreover, the next level down in the captivity of this pressing nature within is that the same mind that pressured me to the point of snapping then condemns me to guilt and suffering over having ever listened to its inner demands and having now hurt another.
A dear friend wrote to me words of wisdom today. These words and the sentiments they conveyed came through her from her own experience with surrendering this false compulsion to be everything for everyone and then judge and condemn youself when, as must inevitably occur, you fall short of someone's want (disguised as a need) of you. What she wrote me helped me to recall the sheer arrogance of clinging to the thought that I am responsible for all that goes wrong for everyone around me. She didn't say it in any harsh way like that, but she lovingly pointed my focus back to our one true responsibility to this moment. If I am responsible to this moment, then it becomes impossible for me to be irresponsible to anything or anyone in it.
I knew this once. But the mind is clever, and even as I believed I had left behind the false responsibilities of this world, it crept back upon me and overtook me when I wasn't looking. That which my mind has claimed is responsible for my present sadness was at one time something I knew in the moment must end. Now, my thinking has raised this dead thing through the false responsibility called guilt. There was no guilt in the moment it died. The moment that I was responsible to made it clear that it was time to be done with the form that interaction had taken on. Only a fool and an egotist is responsible to and for the past and for those who take up residence in what was and then blame him for their suffering over where they have chosen to reside.
This moment, I accept the need to sacrifice this me who believes he is responsible for the world of those around him. I don't know how he took control of me again, but I know I must be diligent and watchful in each moment, for he is that cunning.
Thank you, Julieann.
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