September 26th - Removing The Sandbags

As children, new to the world, we are so free. We are like beautiful, hot air balloons, flying freely through bright, blue skies. It's easy to be happy. It's so easy to smile and laugh. It's easy to be lighthearted. Then people start handing us sandbags. These sandbags are mostly made up of the dos, don'ts, shoulds, shouldn'ts and have-tos that we learn to bear. They tell us, "Here. Take these sandbags. You have to carry them in your basket." We take on more and more sandbags, until our basket is so full, we are pulled down to the ground. Most of us continue to take on more sandbags throughout the courses of our lives. We never get flying, again. In fact, we stop believing that we are supposed to fly. We look around at everyone we know, and almost no one is flying. They are all weighed down by the sandbags they accepted.

If this sounds familiar, please don't blame the people who gave you the sandbags. They didn't mean any harm. They thought they were helping. They were just passing on what they learned in the course of their own lives. You, however, have an opportunity to take a different tack.

You witness that some people ARE still flying. They mostly think and act differently than the others. They may have been lucky enough to find a good teacher who taught them how to start removing the sandbags, and to stop taking new sandbags on. They may have just been very fortunate to have independently developed the qualities of observation, discernment and courage, and were able to forge their own beliefs and ideas and roll with them, and discarded the sandbags of their own accord.

I am not advocating running away from your responsibilities. Sometimes you have to land your balloon to help another, or to complete a task that has to be completed. You may find it necessary to retain a few of the sandbags. I'm recommending that you take an inventory of your sandbags, and notice how many of them are unnecessary. How much are you weighed down, unnecessarily, by things that you learned from others that are not necessarily true, and not necessarily serving you? How many things were you taught about who you are, that are not necessarily true? How many limited beliefs about yourself and others are you carrying with you? How many prejudicial ideas are you carrying about others, that might not necessarily be true? How many ideas are you carrying about the world and everything in it, that may not be serving you or the world?

If you find yourself grounded by the heaviness of your sandbags, you can systematically pick them up, observe them, and discard the ones that don't serve you. If you do so, you will eventually see that your basket is lifting off the ground again. One day you will be flying so high above the clouds, you won't want to come down too much. Other people will call to you to come down. When you come down, they will immediately start handing you sandbags, again. They don't know any better. They don't remember how to fly, and they are afraid to let go of their sandbags, so they can't reach you up there. Come down, when need be. Try to help them remove their sandbags. If it's too scary for them, and they won't let the sandbags go, don't let them keep you grounded. There are too many others who need your help to fly. You'll eventually find someone else who will remove their sandbags, and you'll fly off together into the wild, blue yonder. The feeling of regaining your freedom can only be matched, again, by helping someone else regain hers or his.

Happy Flying,
Alan