The class I'm taking around dealing with my money issues continues to amaze me for a variety of reasons.
The first is this whole "all roads lead to Rome" thing. Yes, it's nominally a class about money, but as Mark himself says, we can use the basic exercises we're learning in our odyssey with money and apply them to pretty much any stumbling block or confounding problem we have. (Obviously, this is not a class where double-entry accounting and Excel spreadsheets figure prominently.)
The second is the profound level of support I'm feeling, both from the way the class and its surrounding activities are structured and from my fellow classmates. Every week, we're partnered up with someone so that we can practice the exercises we're learning on our own time and strengthen those muscles. Not only have I been matched with extraordinary partners for these two weeks so far, but when a future partner bailed for some reason, I had a host of people swoop down and offer to help me that week. All but one of whom did not know me from Adam. Pretty extraordinary.
But the thing that really has my head swimming right now is a central question that keeps getting asked of us over and over as we move through some of this difficult, swamplike territory we're navigating: what if it was okay?
What if, for example, it was okay that you were a crumpled heap of a poopy mess just thinking about what how money had leveled your family and laid decades of your life to waste? What if you could just let that be, and notice it, and not try to jump in and fix it?
What if you could just be a hot mess?
Not forever, maybe, but right now? What would happen if you could step back and just look at something under a particular kind of light, a loving light, in this case; a Light, if you will.
What would happen if there was room in your heart for the twin notions that everything was completely effin' fakata right now, and that someday, it might not be?
What would happen if you could start a project not knowing where it might take you? Or if you could even take an action, not knowing if it would become a project?
What if? What then?
It's funny: I signed up for a class about money; it seems I ended up taking one in the wonders of unconditional love...
xxx
c
Image by Rob Lee via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.