My work on becoming a human BEing not a human DOing is starting to kick in. Been working with a life coach/spiritual director. Three weeks ago my assignment was to start living by this mantra alone: “No efforting, only allowing” rather than all the thinking, reading, talking and straining I was in the habit of. First I had to deal with the bad grammar. Decided I liked it because the awful word “efforting” pulls me right down out of monkey mind every time. I tried it on. Every time I felt all pushy and hyper, I told myself, “No efforting, only allowing.” Oh, my. Gets me right where I needed to be living. In the God place. And it’s taking me deeper. For the longest time I’ve been terribly fretful about the quality of my meditation time. It just seemed too hard to sit in quiet contemplation. I could sit on the train the morning for that hour, read, write, meditate, listen to guided imageries. But anywhere else (except on the beach or in the woods but I can’t or don’t always get to those places) I get all fidgety and jumping and first thing I know I’m unloading the dishwasher, texting someone or making to-do lists); and while the train meditations are great, there are certain limitations. I wanted to spend more time improving my conscious contact with my higher power. But I’d been going about it in a less than effective way, pushing, straining, trying, trying trying. No efforting, only allowing. By stopping all that effort, I started permitting my higher self to be heard. Just tonight I found myself in my little meditation corner in the basement, drawn there not by some magic tractor beam of white light, or pushed there by some great surge of will and effort, but because I allowed myself to follow the little voice that came, while I was putting in a load of laundry, and said, “Just try it.” And so I did, and I lit some candles, settled the dog on her special blanket and sat for a few minutes of sincere, dedicated, intimate contemplation. How cool is that? No efforting, only allowing.