Jonathan Livingston Seagull

“They are saying in the Flock that if you are not the Son of the Great Gull Himself”, Fletcher told Jonathan one morning after Advanced Speed Practice, “then you are a thousand years ahead of your time.”
Jonathan sighed. The price of being misunderstood he thought. They call you devil or they call you god. “What do you think, Fletch? Are we ahead of our time?”
A long silence, “Well, this kind of flying has always been here to be learned by anyone who wanted to discover it; that’s got nothing to do with time. We’re ahead of the fashion, maybe. Ahead of the way that most gulls fly.”“That’s something,” Jonathan said, rolling to glide inverted for a while. “That’s not half as bad as being ahead of our time”.
Richard Bach
Jonathan Livingston Seagull

The Seagull Speaks Creative Commons Copyright

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Non-Attachment to Outcomes

Fixation on the outcome of things has always been a big issue for me, so I am greatly relieved that I am at least conscious of it now, if not always able to put non-attachment to outcome into practice. 

I realise that in the past I have taken rejection and failure badly and I have internalised the associated pain into my emotional body. This is the normal state of affairs for nearly everyone! 

I have found that the secret is to maintain an emotional detachment from ....for example - work - it is my job, but it is not me....therefore, I can maintain some distance and not get “sucked into the drama”...to not feel that there has to be a positive outcome to the things I am engaged in to make me feel happy....or indeed a negative outcome to make me feel sad, upset, angry...the situation is as it is. I accept it so as not to respond emotionally...though that isn’t to say that I shouldn’t ask for answers, but I try to do so in an unattached way.....
 
I have definitely been responding more consciously to these things at work. I am becoming much better at integrating my state of Being into my work-life (while recognising my slips backwards and forgiving myself)....it is kind of a paradoxical thing....letting go and accepting is not doing nothing (Jeshua talks about this through Pamela Kribbe in "From Ego to Heart III" http://www.jeshua.net ), but it is a case of “allowing the universe to unfold as it should” to quote Disderata.

There is a reason for and a message in everything from which to learn ...it’s just a matter of being conscious of the many possible choices we can make in any given moment.....is this action fulfilling a need for outcome that I have in my self? Is this response from my highest level of truth? Do I need to say this/do this? Will my response stir things up and muddy the waters or will it bring  clarity to me? 

Only each of us as individual souls can make these choices for ourselves.....It is our consciousness that creates the reality we live and will live in the future....but choices from the higher truth open up numerous other possibilities....we create a space in which to Be and in which others are invited to enter into.....and the more open our hearts are to these possibilities and the less fixated we are on outcomes, based on the mind, the better it is for us....and the future of humanity on Earth....