Ditch the timeline

But keep living into who you are becoming.

It’s new, again

I’ve started practicing Joe Dispenza morning meditations to get out of my head (that is being more neurotic than usual). Joe is all about living into the future based on your more evolved self — who you are becoming — instead of being stuck in the past. 

It isn’t very here now but is also very here now. He says, the longer you linger in gratitude, the more you draw your ‘new’ life to you. The meditation ends with “when you open your eyes you arrive to a new body, a new environment, a whole new time.” It’s dramatic and an effective way to embody what you want — the way you want to be and how you want to feel.

Approaching every day with a sense of renewal and possibility is an exciting and relieving way to live. It’s helping me remember that the turmoil I feel will pass and that what is ‘wrong’ in my life can change. Every moment is new, every day is an opportunity to live more into my best self. Again and again.

Are we ever really starting over?

In meditation, when you realize you are not with your breath, you come back to it. The same is true for everything you practice. It’s ok if you fall off. All you have to do is return to the breath, the practice.

We cannot move backward because that is not how time works. There is nowhere to go but ahead. Even if we fall into patterns that we worked hard to get out of, we still continue to move forward.  Periods of relapse or falling off the wagon allow us to collect knowledge and experience. Every time you recommit to recovery, you do so having lived through that last relapse. Every time you become aware that you are somewhere else, you can return. 

Can you even plan for the future?

Something I’ve come to believe deeply is that if it doesn’t happen right now, it’s not meant to. What if it’s happening at the rate it is able to — and therefore, the rate it is supposed to?

The less I attach to a timeline, the easier and more enjoyable my life gets. I don’t have control over time or other people or when it gets dark outside. But I can steer myself in the direction of things that bring me satisfaction and the kinds of experiences I want to have. I can think about how I want to feel in all these areas of my life, without fixating on specific outcomes. The details aren’t up to me.

Minds love to have answers and ‘safety’ so they try to plan for things to happen at a certain time. Since this is impossible, mind plans cannot be trusted. Trying to force anything before it’s time won’t work. Or, it’ll work for a while with a lot of extra effort before devolving in a sad or explosive way and making you bitter and afraid. 

Absolving the mind of its timeline planning duties allows it to be curious and explore and make innovative and actually useful contributions to the world.

Maybe you can trust time to work on its own.

Maybe you’re supposed to wait longer. Maybe it isn’t the right time, maybe you don’t have to make that decision right now, maybe you don’t know yet. Maybe it’ll happen on its own, or maybe not.

In the meantime, it is possible to feel open and joyful and peaceful (etc. etc.) in the midst of feeling all kinds of the opposite.

What if you can trust that what’s meant for you won’t miss you?

Because if you’re paying attention, there’s no way it can.

xx, maggie