Please Keep the Noise Down
This week I did some readings in a venue that I hadn’t ever worked in
before. During the first reading of the day I was very annoyed by a
poster on the wall that I could hear flapping noisily throughout the
session. When I went take it down to get some peace and quiet, I was
rather amused by the fact that the poster read ‘Please Keep the Noise
Down’.
It made me wonder what we might be asking for in our lives that we are
not giving.
For me, it is ‘responsibility’. My work, my relationships and my life
philosophy at this moment all pivot around the notion of responsibility.
I cannot think of many things I value more highly than that and, as
such, I continually request it from everyone around me: ‘please take
responsibility for your finances’, ‘please be responsible for asking for
what you need’, ‘please remember you are responsible for this reading’
and so on. If I were a poster, I would definitely read ‘Please Take
Responsibility for This Experience’!
Yet, if I’m really honest (ouch), I can see that I don’t yet take
responsibility for a number of things, for example my health and
physical appearance. I take for granted my good state of health (which
somehow I imagine will miraculously and effortlessly follow me into old
age) and therefore I don’t pay too much attention to what I consume nor
to giving my body enough opportunities to move and stretch. I blame lack
of money for the fact that I don’t join a gym, take excellent care of my
health or dress beautifully when in actual fact I could easily do all
those things with some re-prioritising, or at the very least some
creative thinking. So, in this and some other arenas, I am not being
responsible and therefore not giving what I am continually asking for.
The arena of relationships is another one where we frequently ask
(usually nag!) for what we ourselves are not giving. This is evident
both in current relationships and, especially, in imagined future
relationships. In a couple of readings where a client has asked about
the possibility of a future romantic relationship, the response has been
to ask what it is exactly that they wish to experience within an ideal
relationship. Frequently the client responds with suggestions such as ‘I
want to be giving and intimate and understood’ or ‘I want to express all
this love that is inside me’. Usually the gentle answer to this is that
those states of being are available to us in any moment of our life –
within or without a relationship - and, indeed, it is our responsibility
to create them if that is what we wish to experience. To someone who is
continually calling out for intimacy, they ask ‘what are you doing right
now about being intimate in every area of your life and in every
relationship’? This shows whether we are prepared to continually give
what we are continually requesting.
What do you find yourself asking for most? What would you as a poster
read: ‘Please Understand Me’? ‘Please Forgive Me’? ‘Please Communicate
with Me’?
Once you identify the request that you most frequently make (or wish you
could make), examine honestly whether you are providing it to yourself
and to others. Where or how might you give more of what you want to
receive?
It just might be that if you experience something as lacking in your
life, or in the world, that it is your specific purpose to bring it.
Maybe this is a hidden route to finding the highest way in any
particular moment and in any particular life.
Thank you to those whose readings have inspired these thoughts.
October 2005
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