What would it be like if we had no idea what the consequences of our decisions would be? What if each time we made a choice, we had to have faith that somehow it was all going to work out in the end?
This is a hard place to be. It is the ultimate “letting go” and non-attachment that yogis are always talking about.
Right now, a couple of my friends are taking an art class at the station called “The Joy of Creating in Mixed Media”. The first three weeks have just been about creating the pieces of their final creation and sometimes they are finding the process quite challenging.
In the first week, they were instructed to simply paint pieces of paper in all of their favourite colours. These sheets would then be cut up and used later. The second week, they were given clay and asked to just create whatever came to their mind. Sure they were given some funky tools to play with. But they were just supposed to be creative (like children). In the third week, they were given copper to play with – to bend and cut and be creative again.
Sounds like fun, eh? So what’s the challenge? What’s so hard about that? The challenge is not knowing how all of these pieces are going to fit together in the end. My one friend said that it’s challenging to create when he has absolutely no idea what the final art piece is going to look like.
If you know what you are aiming for, isn’t it easier to make choices now?
It’s a great question for art class and definitely for life.
We make choices every day and we hope that we are making good choices. We hope that these choices will lead us to the life that we want. We hope that the choices that we make for our children will create strong foundations for their future.
But do we really know what that future looks like? We know what it might look like. We know what we might LIKE it to look like. But we don’t really know what’s in store.
We don’t know what our kids will choose once they leave our homes. Were those guitar lessons a good idea? Was hockey the right thing? Who knows? Who knows what they learned or didn’t learn based on the choices we made.
The problem is that when we think that we know what the future will be like, we create all kinds of expectations around everything we do. The fun, intrigue, and spontaneity is taken out of life because we are actually only doing things to attain a desired end result.
Releasing the need to “see the end result” lets us make choices in the present. It lets us choose things intuitively – trusting our gut instinct – trusting our inner guidance. Then we can move forward just experiencing our choices – not needing to know where they will lead us.
Being able to trust the process lets life become intriguing. Life holds mysteries at every turn. How is this going to turn out? I wonder where this path will lead me?
Life becomes very entertaining PLUS we get to fully enjoy all of the steps along the way without any attachment to how things will turn out!!
Fun, intrigue and spontaneity become our everyday!!!
Just like a child in art class!!
Here is a beautiful video about creating our art:
