IS: The only choice you'll ever make
Upcoming public events:
- Friday January 31 - Connection Call
IS calls typically start at 1pm Pacific Time (4pm Eastern, 9pm UTC). Community Hub calls for Season 17 run every Sunday through March 23.
There are only two directions in a relationship: toward, and away.
And we're always in relationship.
...this could sound like a fortune-cookie cliche to you (and that's okay!), or it could hit you the same way it hit me this week — as a "simplicity on the other side of complexity" nugget of wisdom that condenses a lifetime of learning experiences into a new clarity.
Those directions, they're tied to emotions. There are only two emotions: love, and fear. (please pardon my oversimplifications in service of impact today. all models are wrong, etc) In embodying our feelings, there are only two stances: open, and closed.
And by relationship, I don't just mean people. I mean everything we're facing — every challenge, every idea, every event, every word. Whatever is in our attention, we are in relationship to/with that thing.
So it's really one choice, over and over, in every moment.
Turn toward, or shrink away. Act from love, or run from fear. Open ourselves, or close off. Welcome the thing, or reject it. Embrace in spaciousness, or defend in clenching. "Be with it all," or resist.
Two directions. One dimension of clustered directional emotion/stance/way-of-being. One choice, one prompt.
It's a clarifying simplicity for me, a real "everything in the world is exactly the same" moment. Of course what unfolds is then rarely some binary outcome, some black-and-white choosing. And if we value towardness-openness-love, can we then love the self that can't help but choose the other direction sometimes? Contemplate that, give yourself grace, and hold the "rightness" of any particular choice loosely. Set your intention, orient your integrity, and may this frame be of service to you in being who you wish to be.
Intentionally,
James