Tag: Expectations
Mystic Minute YouTube Video: Shattering Expectations
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Mystic Musings: “Playing Hooky From Life”
Playing Hooky From Life ©2018 Joan M. Newcomb, CPC
When I was five, we moved to England. We hadn’t found a school for me when my brothers went off to their new institutions in late August. I remember pulling the curtains in the living room in the day time so the truant officers couldn’t see me playing hooky.
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| The Truant’s Log, R Hedley 1899′ |
Now, there probably weren’t truant officers in England, in the same way there were ones in the U.S. And I probably was only out of school for maybe a week, before I was enrolled in a girl’s private school. I was five, and starting kindergarten probably wasn’t as important as getting my brothers into appropriate middle and high schools.
Looking back, that whole experience was a huge shift in reality. I wasn’t playing hooky, I was transitioning from one universe to another one. From suburban Maryland to the city of London. From running through backyards barefoot, to school uniforms and lace up shoes.
When I was fifteen, I lived in Canada. The teachers went on strike for 3 months in the middle of my grade 10. I wasn’t exactly playing hooky during that time, as school wasn’t happening. But I learned there were options and choices.
It was another huge shift in reality. It disrupted my path. If that hadn’t happened, I would have gone in an obedient pattern through high school and college. Instead, after 2 1/2 years of high school, I went to college early. After 2 semesters of college, I went back to London at 18 and auditioned for drama school. I spent a year in drama school before being culled, moved back to the States… eventually ending up in a Mystery School in Seattle which set me on my true life path.
The point of this isn’t my education. The point is about playing hooky from life, taking a break from expectations of what we’re supposed to do so that we can reflect on what we want to do. So that we can make choices and take actions as greater Consciousness rather than just responding to what we “should” be doing.
These shoulds, these expectations, these supposed tos, are so deeply ingrained, they’re invisible to us. We can’t see how we’re running off patterns that were installed generations back.
Sometimes it seems like life creates a pattern interrupt, moving you to a different country and culture, or distrupting a school year, setting into motion a series of events that puts you on a different life and career path than you thought possible.
And you can create your own breaks, whether it’s a day a week or longer. To stop doing your regular routine and what’s expected of you. To get your head clear to know what your heart is calling you to do. How your Essence wants to be expressed in this world. What you as Consciousness wants to experience instead.
We are scared to do this because it feels like our whole life may collapse, and we’ll lose parts that are important to us. Yet when we do this as Consciousness, it can result in a gentle rearranging of reality, or finding your life falls into place more perfectly that you can imagine.
My experience of embodying Consciousness is that it’s a lot less painful than forcing yourself to conform so that your parents can understand your choices, for example.
Consciousness is much more benevolent than society. Take a day off and discover how munificent this Universe really is.
Mystic Musings: Freedom From Want
Freedom From Want ©2017 Joan M. Newcomb,
Yesterday was Thanksgiving, the start of a month’s worth of expectations. That family and friends should be gathering, that there should be an abundance of food and gifts. That everyone is supposed to be warm and loving to each other.
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| Freedom From Want by Norman Rockwell |
My family of origin lived up to those expectations for the first fifteen years of my life, until the patterns started to break down. And we had pretty high expectations. My great-uncle Jim McCabe is in the iconic Norman Rockwell painting.
My early memories are of grand holiday meals, although we lived overseas most of those years so sometimes we had goose instead of turkey.
The family started shattering when I was sixteen, and I maybe initiated, contributed or reflected that shattering… I was hospitalized for depression in an adolescent ward of a mental hospital during the holidays that year.
The next year, I just remembered, I had Thanksgiving with my great-uncle’s family in Connecticut (after visiting him in Vermont). I was in college and my parents were in Sweden. My father left my mother shortly afterwards; I really don’t remember any Thanksgivings with them after that.
As an adult I tried gamely to create holiday meals like the ones I’d had in my early childhood. But the family I created broke apart when my kids were little. Since their father was a gourmet chef and I had never cooked a turkey, I wrote it into the parenting plan that they spent every “big meal” day with him. I had no idea that it set me up to be alone for all those holidays.
At some point my kids learned from their cousins that they got two Thanksgivings. The cousins would see both sets of parents on the same day. Since my culinary skills couldn’t match their father’s, I had our Thanksgiving meal the Sunday before, which both spared it the competition and meant they’d eaten my leftovers before they went to their dad’s for the remaining part of the week.
Every Thanksgiving for years, I was always scrambling to be “adopted” somewhere to eat with other people. It was always a painful and lonely time.
When I remarried, our first Thanksgiving together, my mother in law was insulted because I had my husband and her work on the turkey. After that, we’d go out for Chinese food instead.
When you look at Thanksgiving from the perspective of Consciousness, you see the tangles of expectations and dysfunctional patterns that actually create separation and lack.
You can be with family and a lot of food, and if it’s filled with assumptions and craziness, you will feel far removed from any sense of connection and abundance.
Thanksgiving isn’t about the big meal. It isn’t about the gathering of family and friends. It isn’t even necessarily about gratitude. As Consciousness, it’s about appreciation.
Appreciation is the neutral form gratitude, because it’s coming from the creator sense rather than the recipient. As we exist as Consciousness and in body, we can experience both, but it’s important to note the difference. Gratitude implies thankfulness for or from something outside of yourself. Appreciation acknowledges and enjoys the creation. Which can even be the creation of chaos and discord.
When you shift your perspective from your body/personality self, to you as Consciousness, you know you already have all that you desire.
As Consciousness there is no separation. You are always connected, even with loved ones who have passed. As Consciousness there is no lack, because Consciousness is the Source of all creation. As Consciousness there is no discord, because Consciousness is essentially love.
This year, my husband and I are at that mid point, where our parents are passed, and our adult children don’t yet have offspring of their own. One son is in Spain; we won’t see him until Easter. Another is on Vashon, with his Dad. We’ll do our meal on Sunday (I now cook salmon instead).
I’m appreciative that I have good relationships with both my kids and my husband. I get to create new patterns rather than passing on historical ones.
This holiday season, when you feel yourself entangled in the insanity, take a moment to shift your perspective (this might require stepping out of the room). View it all from Consciousness, appreciate this playground of a planet, and notice how your reality transforms!