If you're not moving forward, you're moving backward.
The first time ever I heard that, I was blinded by the light! I'd probably heard it many times, but the first time ever I inside heard it, I knew it for truth. I saw that there is no standing still. Nothing is stationary, not even the Rock of Gibraltar...every day Gibraltar is changing...minutely, but changing, and so are we.
We get to a place of peace and want to stay there...now we've got it, now we're safe, we tell our self. So we hunker down and try to hold it. Right then we've shifted into reverse by trying to hold on to that feeling of peace. There is no peace when we're trying to hold on to it...we've just lost it in the trying.
Here's a paradox: When we realize that we're moving backward is when we've started moving forward...it is that realization (and panic) that turns us away from self toward help from elsewhere. Maybe toward God, maybe a mentor, maybe our spiritual director...whoever, wherever, it is away from self, and it feels scary. Because we don't know. Period. We do not know. Or we wouldn't be seeking help.
A further paradox comes when we find that place of peace again. If we haven't entirely surrendered to a power greater than our self, we will again try to grasp that feeling of peace...nail it down inside, hoping it will hold forever. Which...here we go again...means we've already lost it, we're moving backward.
According to me, that is a very simple description of life itself...and that's if we're doing it right. There is no perfect peace with never a blemish or a niggle in life. Indeed, striving for that, we are taught, is the "point at which we depart from the degree of perfection that God wishes for us here on earth."
It is the striving for peace (for any inside thing, really) that takes it away from God, keeps it our self-perceived objective, and heads us down that wrong road again.
Loose it and let it go.
Thank you.
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