Hi Everyone,
As some of you know, I’m in Vermont now with my family, even though I had planned to move to San Diego.
In fact, I was so sure I was moving to San Diego that I shipped all of our earthly possessions there in a moving pod.
It’s still there.
So I only have the things I packed in a small suitcase, 42 days ago, on July 24.
I’ve been joking about this with my mother as I appear again each morning wearing the same pair of jeans and old pink sweatshirt. I only packed one pair of jeans, and it is mucho mas frio in Vermont than San Diego.
“It’s my uniform” I tell her.
There’s a saying attributed to Andy Warhol: “if you want to be remembered, always wear the same clothes.” He also recommended wearing the same clothes so you could be certain people were liking you for yourself, and not your clothes.
So I guess I’m good on both counts.
Since I never have to spend time thinking about what to wear, I’ve had some free time to muse about my attachment to my stuff.
On the one hand, when I think of the hassle of getting it all shipped here, I imagine that I would prefer never to see any of it again.
On the other hand, almost every day I think of some little, or big thing, either for myself or the kids, something that’s missing, and I remember, oh, it’s in the pod, and I feel like some little part of me, of our lives, is missing too.
It’s a slight feeling of diminshment, even disorientation. I imagine it’s like feeling a phantom limb. I reach for something, and it isn’t there. I think of people who have lost everything in a fire or other disaster, and empathize. The felt sense is, there’s a way I can’t show up because I don’t have that particular thing.
In A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle writes about our attachment to things.
We all have it.
We all like our stuff.
He writes about a woman nearing the end of her life who freaks out because she loses a precious ring. He asks her, do you realize that soon you will have to let all your things go? Are you diminished in your being because you don’t possess it? Can you ever, really possess it?
She wrestles with these questions, as most of us would.
Obviously the correct answer is “no.” My being is not diminished because I don’t have my things.
But it has been “fun” (fun?) to watch my own discomfort arising with this, in daily experience.
Can I really, really FEEL the sufficiency of my being? My enough-ness?
Can I help my five-year-old daughter really feel that she has enough toys, even though some are missing?
In a commodity culture, where every look from another person sizes you up, can I show up, again and again, in “my uniform” and feel that I am enough?
…
I’ve come to feel that many of my things help me show up, not in my essential being, but in my image or persona.
This can be fun (yes, fun!) But it isn’t necessary. There are other ways of enjoyment.
So now, today, I’m cultivating the practice of showing up, for myself, in the enough-ness of my being. Regardless of what I’m wearing, regardless of whether “my stuff” arrives any time soon.
I don’t really need anything but awareness to feel my connection with being, with life energy, with WHAT IS.
We are all an essential part of that, inseparable from what is, totally connected and one with being at all times no matter what.
Today I show up in the sufficiency of my being. Just me. Enough.
Namaste,
Erin Menut
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