Are you comfortable in the okayness of your world? Many of us run from the bad stuff, numb out from the ugly stuff, and consume to get to the good stuff. What happened to okayness being good and good enough? There are so many lessons waiting to unfold in the okayness of our world.
We’ve all been there. We’ve all experienced those moments of intense joy and exuberance, some perhaps more attuned into those moments than others. Remember that immense joy and exuberance you felt when you were working on an advanced posture and your body danced into the pose instead of wrestled with it? And if you don’t practice yoga, at least not yet (big smiles here), what about the immense joy we experience when we connect to and witness life come into being?
Perhaps the feeling is so overwhelmingly exuberant that we are too scared to actually feel the joy so we miss it and then once things evolve into just being ok we miss that too because we are consuming to get to the good stuff. Note the difference between consume and connect. When we are committed in the moment we are connecting. When we are anywhere but the moment we are consuming. Consume is to destroy, expend by use, to spend wastefully, to absorb. Connect is to join together and to establish communication between.
The path to more freedom, more love, and more presence is about more connection and less consumerism. When we learn, practice, and evolve the art of connection we learn the vital value of the okayness we experience in our lives. The path to enlightenment about more stuff or more thoughts, but it is about more connection.
Sometimes I have an urge to take my okay moments and fix them, to try my best to be present enough to get to the next happy stop when I’ve missed the lesson completely. I’ve missed the lesson of being completely present trough the okayness of my life. No happy, no pain – just ok. Ah, and the real lesson is that there is joy in the okayness.
Rituals help us connect to the okayness. Rituals give us the boundaries to know freedom – freedom of mind and heart. But, how do we know freedom if it’s bounded by ritual? Because rituals help us to connect to the freedom within our relational home, our highest sense of Self. When we navigate our okayness with more presence we deepen our connection to a place we’ve known since we were born. We deepen the connection we have to the archetypal mother. It’s here where we can deepen our connection to the okayness in our life and even find joy in those moments.
It’s most important to keep our rituals strong through the ok moments because the thread that moves through these times will shelter us in the highs and lows of our own life. The thread will bind us together in changing the collective conscious of our world to experience a greater love, and consequently, to act from a greater place of love.
If you are experiencing a lot of okayness in your life and you find yourself consuming to get to the next happy stop or numbing out from the ugly stuff or running away from the bad stuff, deepen your connection to rituals in your life.
If you don’t have daily rituals, start them now. Have a cup a tea a day, meditate/pray, take a walk around the block, or take a hot bath at the end of the day and stick with it no matter what. Stay mindful in the ritual practice to experience the nectar of joy in the okayness of our life. Perhaps, we might not feel the exuberance of just finishing a successful project or completing a race we trained long and hard for or witnessing the birth of new life, but we will experience joy in the okayness once we deepen our connection to rituals.
Rituals fuel our internal love fire to stay steady in the okayness. They guide us to connect more and consume less. In the thread of ritual, embrace your okay and deepen your way through the good, bad, and ugly in a more aware and healthy state of mind, and you will find a little more connection and sustenance in the just ok, perhaps even a little joy.
Om Shanti Om ~ Athea
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I will take OK anyday. I used to chase “happy” and I realize that peace is really what I am really after. Exhuberance is wonderful but fleeting. Also, when I am in a dark place I try to remember that “this too shall pass”. The roller coaster and drama of life isn’t for me anymore. As a matter of fact extreem highs and lows have proven to be a slippery slope emotionally. The human element is to seek pleasure and comfort and to avoid pain. It’s just to what extent we do this is and how we can take it to extreems that it become dangerous; such as when we practice harmful addictions. The addict seeks pleasure and relief from pain but as is all addictiond they cease to deliver over time. We find that we cannot run anymore, sometimes we have to lean into the pain, and walk through it coming out the other side having learned a lesson, becoming more resileante or more compassionate if we choode to embrace it and not avoid. There is really no where to run and hide anymore. Harmony, union balance is the essence of yoga. I so appreciate being just OK today. I so appreciate you dear Athea, Namaste’
Great insight, Bev! Thank you so much for sharing. Love and Hugs ~ A.