Playing with my cats earlier today….
Orono (a Maine Coon, natch) knows how to play Bat At the Cat
Toy. She has lots of fun leaping and pouncing, and she knows that the fun is
prolonged when she simply “counts coup” on her enemy, leaving the toy available
for an immediate new game. The challenge is in the doing.
Gabriel, alas, finds the subtleties of Orono’s strategy
perplexing. For him, the name of the game is catch that bird-substitute, hold
onto it with jaws of steel, give it a neck bite and drag it off one’s lair and
gloat over your victory. I have seen him shake his head – a feline ploy to help
snap the prey’s neck. Sigh. His insistence on refusing to catch and release
means that every time he catches the toy I have to wrestle it away from him
before any of us can have any more fun. (If I don’t wrestle it away, he shreds
it in too-authentic predator style.) He cannot hold on to his gettings lightly.
He doesn’t share anything; he treats every treat as though it will be his last.
He never lets go. He does not believe that if he lets go that he will ever get
another shred of prosperity again. All evidence to the contrary will not shake
him.
We all know people like Gabe. They snatch. They hold on to
their possessions and the people in their lives with a death grip. That
approach, they think, at the deepest, unrational limbic system where humans
make most of their decisions, will allow them to be financially, professionally
and in all other ways happy.
Funny thing is – exactly the opposite is true. Avoiding extremes
of fiscal extravagance and unconsciousness, of course, if you keep a light hand
on the reins of your life, you can feel nuances and changing circumstances and
have a much better chance of staying on the sunny side of the street. When you
are desperately trying to control someone or something, your hands get hard and
insensitive; you can’t feel the nuances any more. Batting at your fun (or your
sorrows) allows more fun to come in to your life. Desperately grabbing onto
every shred of fun and refusing to allow the positive energy to circulate in
the world guarantees that less fun will come your way – you are a dead end and
energy wants to circulate.
If that’s too fanciful, here’s the more concrete version: if
you touch all the things and people who come your way with a light touch (not
grabbing like Gabe), if you are not desperate to get the business or convince
someone of something, if you are not convinced that you can manifest any and
every outcome your desires can conjure, you invite people to come closer. Open,
welcoming arms, open minds and communication without needing a particular
outcome is more likely to give you what you really need, in a
day/week/month/year/life. If you stop trying to manifest and just go about your
work in the world, stopping to say “thank you” for whatever shows up, whether
you label it as “Good [I got what I want]” or “Bad [I didn’t get what I want],”
then you have the magic formula for a happy life. Regardless of whether you got the
million-dollar income or the wonderful spouse, you will be centered, content,
happy, with dozens of friends who just adore you, because you are life-giving
sun, pouring joy into everyone else from your own limitless supply.
Another fish will be along in the universe’s own perfect time.
