Here's something from another blog (http://besubtle.blogspot.com/) that got me thinking:


It is 5:11pm on Sunday. I have just finished my midterm paper for my developmental psychology class. Officially, it is not due until 2pm tomorrow, which means I have twenty hours and forty-nine minutes left before the deadline.

This is the first time I can remember, if not the first time in my life, that I have finished an assignment like this with plenty of time to spare. Not only that, I managed to work every day this week training for my new job, getting 100% on all the food/wine tests they gave, go to the gym, do all the work for my other class, stay current on my Course in Miracles practice, find an hour a day for meditation, and hang out with my lovely wife.

In previous lives, I would have undoubtedly found myself in a state of panic very soon. I would have noticed the sun was coming up, which meant I only had a few hours left to finish the reading I had to do in order to even start my paper, and I would have to come up with some excuse why I couldn't make it into work that day. I would probably have been up for at least 30 hours, drinking redbulls and smoking cigarettes incessantly. I probably wouldn't have eaten for some time. Every room in my house would be clean (since that used to be a favorite way for me to procrastinate), and I would have probably started three or four big projects in the meantime (like building a doghouse) to distract me from actually sitting down to do some work.

It really amazes me how much energy I used to put into not getting started on what needed to be done. That's not to say this way is any easier, or takes any less energy. I always got the assignment done on time, after all, and I'm still exhausted. This way just makes for a smoother ride...

It seems, in spite of myself, that I've managed to make some progress after all...


This struck me with a dawning realisation of how much potential lies in all the hours when there seems to never be enough time even to do the simplest things properly. Reading this, I was amazed at how much one can do, and wanted to know how he possibly manages it all. But, really, I'm called upon to look at my life honestly and ask - why can't I?
There is so much energy put in to other things, like fear and anxiety and suppression and putting things off and apathy and uncertainty. It's absolutely amazing how much energy is put in to not putting energy in - to procrastination, to saying 'can't do it now, i'll do it another time' - so much poured in to keeping this as the dominant mode, because to maintain it requires constant vigilance against what doesn't want this to be the way I live my life - the inspiration, the love, the motivation - and so much is put in to pushing away and trying to cure the guilt and the gnawing feeling that comes from this.
If life is potentiality, then it is a choice constantly made to put energy in to these things, when it could be put in to the things I really want to do and be and the things that would really be best and greatest and that would really serve and actually make this life in to something worthwhile. On the most basic, fundamental level, it is simply a matter of choosing to change where I channel my energy, choosing to put it where it would serve the highest good, rather than into where it would not so much. It is shifting my way of being in the world. And that is always a choice. Although it may seem difficult, that is ok, because looking back on things I can see that what seems difficult at times is often quickly overcome. It is fleeting, rather than defeating. Difficultly does not mean stop. It means faith. Commitment, devotion, dedication to constantly choosing to realign ones life - that is how it is done. As the saying goes, it is step by step, one day at a time, one moment at a time. I would open up to life.