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The other day I sat down to do this guided meditation that I had found online. It was a meditation that was intended to help you let go and surrender. What I didn’t expect was to have such an intense emotional response to this meditation literally to the point where I began streaming tears from my face and sobbing out loud several times throughout the session. I didn’t realize that I would have such emotional response when things were said about not needing to be in control all the time and just learning to live with ease and flow.
I have always tended to try to control everything to my favor, to avoid my fear of being vulnerable or hurt. Always attempting to manipulate and coax situations and people to do as I desire so that I would get the results that I wanted in a situation. What I have had to realize is that I don’t have to try to control everything and that it’s ok to sometimes make mistakes or be put into an unexpected situation because that is where I will grow and learn.
I also need to practice letting go and surrendering more often, both mentally and physically. Doing this meditation has made me realize that I have a ton of layers of shit that I need to surrender and let go of. The release that I felt was both amazing and scary at the same time. Feeling completely open, exposed, and vulnerable and going into the parts of myself that I have kept enclosed for so long is not easy. Admitting to myself and to the world that I am not perfect and realizing that I don’t always have to try to create perfect situations feels both uplifting and scary. Always trying to give off the persona of being reserved, poised, and in control has led me to being in a situation where I can often come across as robotic and unrelatable. That trying to always be the smartest person in the room and being pedantic and persnickety is not helping me.
That there is no need for me to always try to force and manipulate what I want, but instead I need to just sometimes let what I want come into being with ease. I remember several months ago during the summer of 2018 when I was doing my yoga teacher training in India my classmates and I had been invited to the wedding of our teacher’s sister. It was a traditional Indian wedding and we were all going to dress in beautiful sarees. We were able to borrow beautiful sarees from our teacher but we would need to go out to the shops to get the blouse to wear underneath. Some time passed and soon we were only one day away to the wedding.
My classmate Esperanza and I set out that day to find the needed blouse and other accessories to complete our outfit. When after we had stopped at several stores and had been looking for a long time, I began to get frustrated and fearful that I would not find what I needed in time. I took the controlling approach. I left my friend behind and travelled to the next town over to look for what I needed. When I returned my friend Esperanza that had taken the approach of ease told me that in the time that I was gone that she had come across a shop owner whose wife was a met someone that was a local tailor from out of their home. She was able to find the perfect blouse that she needed that way along with beautiful accessories and with out exerting the force and extra effort that I did of traveling to another destination and feeling like she was in a crunch. She just went about her day with the desire to find what she needed without feeling attached to the result. She was able to attract it to her instead of trying to force the outcome.
Reflecting back on this experience now what I am learning is that not trying to control things can lead me to attracting what I need and want into my life more often and easier than taking a forceful approach.