Last week, I introduced you to the secret message in A Christmas Carol. We continue with that this week. If you haven't read last weeks, DO IT NOW! HERE!
STAVE TWO: Our Chains of Future Dread
I'm gonna break with the structure of A Christmas Carol a bit, because well, you'll see later…
Let's talk about the Chains of Future Dread.
We all drag them around like Marley's ghost.
We worry about the weather this weekend, about the meeting our boss called for tomorrow, or next month,
about our kids,
the mortgage,
our student loan debt,
the proverbial wolves at the fuckin' door,
what if we get sick and die,
what if we get in a car accident and live as an invalid the rest of our days?
I mean, wtf?
Sometimes this shit spins around in our mind until it grinds us to a halt. I call it my Warring Blender of Dog Shit n Crackers.
We're overwhelmed with dread, a deer in the headlights of life.
Scrooge had his own blender of shite spinning around in his decrepit old brain, too, I guarantee it.
He was obsessed with the Future, thanks to his toxic Past. Since he was born with very little (love, money, security) he worried constantly that what he had wasn't enough.
In his argument with Fred, his gregarious nephew, he said,
"There is no such thing as rich enough, only poor enough."
He obsessed with the Future all the time. So much so, that he missed the good moments in front of him in the Present.
How many dinner parties, and special events have you turned down over the years because you were caught up in your own mental, unhappy horse-shit?
We take real incidents from our Past, which we have stored in our psyche and grossly skewed by our world view and prejudices, and then we launch them into the Future as projections and predictions of doom. Then we worry about all of it, in the Present… UGH!
It's as if the phantom from the story is standing over us with a sickle, pointing to our ultimate demise.
All of this is a distraction from WHAT IS!
The bizarre truth is we can't actually DO anything about those events. Because they haven't yet happened. They AREN'T HAPPENING. The Future doesn't actually exist.
Obviously I'm over-exaggerating for effect, but only a little.
Sometimes my scene is all too real. Most of the time, of course, our dread is low-level: let's call it anxiety, a persistent drone of mild fear about what's around the corner.
What does this do for us?
Nothing good.
It fucks up our Present.
We're always living in the Past. which exists on in misremembered memory, or in the Future, only fearful predictions based on our misremembered experiences of the Past.
What happened to NOW? It's gone. SNAP! POOF!
What can you do about this? Everything.
This is simply our MIND out of control.
Most of us spend our lives attempting, as Scrooge did, to rearrange and control the world OUTSIDE our mind to resemble those fleeting perfect moments from our Past, so we won't be disturbed anymore and can finally be happy.
But we don't have actual control over the external world!
So we've set ourselves up for perpetual failure in life. We will NEVER be happy that way. The Universe IS WHAT IT IS.
What we CAN DO, is change our minds ABOUT the world.
STAVE THREE: Scrooge, Resistance, and the Present Moment
The Present is All There Is
There is no Past or Future.
The Past is gone. While it did happen, there's nothing you can do about it. The Future ain't ever gonna exist, because once it does, it's the Present or the Past.
That doesn't mean you can't plan for the Future.
Just don't obsess about it, especially if your plan is just a bunch of doom and gloom. Why in the hell would you want to plan for THAT?
The philosopher Alan Watts once said,
"Planning for the Future is only ever useful to those who know how to fully live in the Present."
Everything: our memories of the Past, and our planning for the Future, occur ONLY in the PRESENT!
READ THAT LAST SENTENCE, AGAIN! MAYBE THREE TIMES!
When Scrooge woke up and popped his bedraggled head out of his window, he discovered it was Christmas Day, and that he hadn't missed it. He was overjoyed.
Had the external world changed overnight? Nope.
Was Bob Cratchit still his underpaid clerk? Yes.
Was Tiny Tim still limpling around on his crutch? Yes.
Were the poor and destitute still in prisons, workhouses, and running the treadmill? Yes.
Was there still a fuckton of pain in the world? Yep.
Then WHAT HAD CHANGED?
Simply the STORY in Scrooge's MIND!
For decades he'd been playing out a story of doom, of fear, of dread, of calousness, coldness, and bitterness.
But thanks to his nightly visitations, he had come to REWRITE that STORY! Instead of dragging around the chains of his Past, he let them go! And he let go of his dread for the Future.
He had learned to live in the PRESENT MOMENT! HERE, NOW.
The beauty of A Christmas Carol is simply the message that WE CAN REWRITE OUR STORY, any damned time we decide to do so!
We do not have to view the world as against us but as an opportunity to help, with JOY.
Does that mean we will be able to rewrite our story overnight?
Is that even possible? Yes, it does happen to people on occasion, but it's not likely.
The SKILL of LETTING GO
What is more certain is that we can learn the skill of letting go. It IS A SKILL, which means we can learn it, with practice!
Our LIFE, all of it, exists only in the Present moment.
How do we regain control of our focus, our awareness and let go of all that stored mental baggage?
Do we have to experience a ghostly, night vigil and visitation from spirits, like Scrooge?
Does Marley have to kick us in our proverbial balls to get our attention, to break the spell?
Or can we do this on our own?
All too often it seems we have to hit rock bottom before we wake the fuck up and realize we need to change our shit. Right?
It certainly seems to work that way for me.
Hopefully you're not at rock bottom, just struggling through another Holiday Season, with the Elvis's 'Blue Christmas' ringing in the background.
I'm not gonna belabor the point any longer.
Here's the solution to everything. And I do mean all of it, because you can only fix YOU. You CANNOT fix the world to match your expectations of it.
However, like Scrooge, if you learn to see the world differently, you can GET TO WORK helping others to do the same, and THAT will change the world!
Tiny Tim did NOT DIE from his affliction.
Bob Cratchit got a raise!
The poor received MORE help that Christmas because Scrooge DID donate to charity.
And in 1843, thanks in large part to Dickens's story, charitable giving rose dramatically, in the REAL WORLD.
We CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE in the World, but not if we're trying to make it match our personal, psychotic vision of what we think it SHOULD BE.
Only by letting go of our chains, and seeing the world for what it is, can we ever hope to influence our little corner of it.
Here's how to LET GO, for real:
- Stop Storing New Shit! Start with the small stuff happening right now!: like the fact that it's raining, or someone didn't text you back fast enough, or at all. I mean, come on; we don't have control over it, so why resist it and store that crap in our psyche?
- When these little things happen during the day,
- Feel the tension in your body, your mind, and your heart.
- Breathe and relax the tension.
- Say this to yourself, "Fuck On. I can deal with this."
- Repeat this until it's automatic. Day after day after day. It's like practicing your writing, your painting, or your guitar, or anything else you're a rank beginner at. You start with the easiest stuff, and progress as you master it.
- When big shit comes up, and it WILL, try to just BE AWARE that you're aware of it happening.
- If you can, remember the mantra, "Fuck On. I can deal with this."
- At first, (and I'm really in step one myself, so I'm not a fuckin guru here), this will be next to impossible.
- If you can simply BE AWARE of what's happening, that's a big win.
- Just try to realize you're in it. Say, "Oh fuck, I'm resisting something big. My mind is spinning on it."
- Check out my books! The End of Fear Itself, and A Ghost of an Idea. The former has tons of stuff on overcoming your Fears. The latter delves into Scrooge's story in a way no one ever has before.
- NEED HELP? Either with this technique, or maybe you want to write a book, start a business, or you're stuck getting your creative project going and need advice? Book a One on One with Me! We'll spend an hour on a video chat and get you going! I promise!
That's actually the essence of all spiritual teaching. It's so simple it can't be true, but it is.
Happy Holidays!
Steve