Projection Anxieties

The No Plan Plan

If I let go enough of everything that I’ve been hanging on to. EVERYTHING. With my mind. The things that I’ve allowed myself to believe. I might just find that what happens next is completely unexpected! And that unexpected experience might just be, will undeniably be, so much more than what my plans were when I was holding onto all the things previously.

My Truth

I often wake up with beliefs like: ‘it’s going to a pretty big day’ or ‘if I smash all those things out I’ll be able to chill later’ or ‘I’m so stoked that these things are meant to be happening today - shit what do I have to do before I can do those things?’.

Bullet Points On My To Do List….To Do List…..To Do List

I’m so geared to utilising this construct of time to organise my future in a way that I feel productive and efficient. So much so that the productivity and efficiency with which I ‘produce’ is so dominant, that the things I’m actually doing lose their value. They become bullet points on my To Do List, even when they’re things I love doing. I become more intent on getting to the end of my checklist for the projected satisfaction that I’m attaching myself to, than basking in the gifts that the present actually is. And even worse is that at the end of my day or week, season, or year, that I reach, I’ve managed to create more To Do Lists for the following period. It’s that whole never ending cycle. And I don’t remember signing up for it!

‘Your Lawn is Looking Good - Congratulations. You’re Such a Success!’

I know it’s cultural. We learn from our early childhood that it’s good to succeed at achieving our various goals. Our parents barracking for us to take our first steps, throwing us in pools for our first laps, graduating pre-school, then kindy, big school, high school, educational goals being kicked left right and centre. In the workforce we rack up another year on the job. Considered a job ‘well done’. Congrats on your new house (we won’t talk about your mortgage), ohh you’re pregnant, doing reno’s, got a pay rise, a promotion, new car. Despite all our ‘successes’, apparently the economy isn’t exactly pumping. Better work harder, save more, make sure we book a holiday or two to reward ourselves. Fuck that’d be good. If we could only go anywhere! Maybe just stay at home and work on the house and yard.

‘Lets Do It!’

We’ve been learning to do this for generations. In our collective masculine, from the agricultural age and pistons pumping into the industrial age, we’ve gone for it! Making things happen. Big business, institutions, economies, apparently it’s global. It’s ‘in the collective consciousness’. We’re all doing it, it must be right?

To be Satisfied

I’m not convinced. Have we developed a herd immunity against spacious, timeless, present moment satisfaction?!

Empty Listings

My never ending to do list doesn’t come with rewards anymore no matter how fun the things on the list I tick off. And what I’m sure of is there’s a semblance of consciousness that I’ve got to get through my lists, the longer I’m denying myself of the contentedness that I deserve. I deserve, we deserve, to know and to experience (all the time!) that feeling of being deeply content. I don’t presume we’ll necessarily achieve that aspiration anytime soon. In fact I’m not even suggesting it’s going to happen this lifetime necessarily, but if I’m going to have goals on that list that I aspire to achieve, I’m putting contentedness at the top of the list. Whilst I’m at it, I’m going to scrub out all the other things and experiment with what happens.

The Balancing Act - Risk versus Rewards

Like you, I’m fearful that if I don’t put things down they won’t get done. And in my experiment, I answer to that with if I need to write it down to remember, it’s not that important to me. I couple this approach with some even measured dosages of practicality for the things that I’m too scared to let go of completely right now. These are the things that I’m not open enough to believe yet, that if I scrub them off my list, and try and welcome them to happen for me as they’re meant to, that they actually will happen. Actually I’m scared they won’t happen, even though I don’t value them that much. ‘Better wash the car’, ‘plant out the fence line’, ‘go to that meeting'. The consequences of not achieving these goals outweigh the burden of making a list of them. Or do they?

I tell myself that if it’s out of my head and onto my lists that I’m no longer burdened by them. Deep down I don’t believe this. I might be less beleagued by the quest to satisfy that goal, but the list now feels bigger than ever!

So this is what I’m proposing. To self…

The Experiment

In my experiment I wake up and remain present for as long as I can. For me personally I experience feelings, and often symbols, or thoughts start to become apparent as I lie there in bed during my first moments of woken consciousness. I’m guided by the energetic essence of what this experience brings. I intentionally sink into this guidance from within and clarify this conversation further. For now the conversation speaks to me with smaller and smaller time frames of intentioned projection. And these intentions are moving further away a list of actionable items, and fast towards a simple notion of embracing an energetic presence.

The experimental conversation in my woken conscious mind at this stage is suggesting that if this was my last day alive, in this body, how is it going to be? In reply to self I acknowledge that what I actually do this day doesn’t hold value for me, it’s how I do it that matters to me. I choose to give myself to myself and to others as presently and wholly as I possibly can. And I feel in my way of being that this is with my focused awareness, and it comes from and through all of me. Experimentally I continually recenter my hypothesis, that the energetic centre of my way of being like this comes from my heart.

Whether it be from my heart, my voice, my perceptions through my third eye, or my clarity of thought, I consciously intend within the construct of time that I frame my day between waking and falling asleep, to be as deeply present as possible. From this place I find love, joy, compassion, contentedness, and a richness of life that doesn’t work towards goals. It just is.

Positive Listless Reflections

The more I experiment with this practice, the shorter the lists, the less I care for the so called aspirations that I’ve been conditioned to believe will make us happy, and the happier I become. And if I was to die tonight, keeping to this unfolding way of being deeply authentic in all the ways I’m meant to be, the more I know that I will have invoked positive change and spiritual growth for both myself and for anyone else that’s in my orbit. All of a sudden needing to do the clean, wash, cook, and bed routine for the kids let alone myself doesn’t seem so dominant when all I can see and feel is smiles and love in the reflection.