Pretty stupid thing for someone who just started a blog to say...but what it means is to give up the hope of anything ever coming to the point where the project is completed, finished, done. It means giving up the idea that there is a "there".
Nothing is ever really done...until we die and then none of us really know what happens - lots of swirling theories but no one actually knows. For me, fruition really shows up as expectation. My life happens right on that edge where I release and let go of all my plans, schemes, expectations and demands. When I allow the freshness of the current moment to capture me and my full attention - I feel alive. I am never going to get "there". NEVER. "There" is just this place that lives in my head that makes me forever miserable. "There" is seductive and alluring and constantly pulls me away from my present moment.
I spent a lot of time beating myself up for being hardwired to believe that "there" is a place I can go where I have all my shit together: where I am happy, can breathe and relax. What I missed for literal decades is that "there" doesn't really exist. All I really have is "now." And now. And now. And now. All I can ever truly posses - is this moment right here. I am never guaranteed the next one.
It is also about me letting go of what I think should happen and just allow whatever is happening to happen. If I am lonely, be lonely. If I am happy, be happy. I really do not want to waste another minute of my life wishing for it to be different. If I am in pain, I want to feel the pain and then release it to the open freshness of the present moment. I want to be curious about my perception: Examine it. Watch it. But not allow it to harden into a storyline. Allow the present moment to be the precious fleeting thing that it is. That moment will never come again so it is special and amazing even if it is painful. I find my life works best when I embrace (regardless of whether my head judges something good or bad), then release.
In fact, the whole of my existence has been a string of moments of acknowledging and releasing. Asking myself the question: How am I right now? Happy, release. Sad, release. Upset, release. Heartbroken, release. Depressed, release. I have found that it is in the release that the next moment is allowed to be fresh and new. Without the release, the next moment must take on the character of the just past moment. That is fantastic if the last moment was one you liked. Not so great if it was one you didn’t.
So regardless of the character of my current state (pleasurable or painful), releasing and allowing the next moment to arrive without expectation or demand, gives me constant access to this crazy life I get to live. I like to think of all of my moments like a hot guy walking past me in a bar. He walks past with so much potential for drama, pain, love and hot sex. I get to make some choices about this man...I can examine the storyline without allowing it to control my actions. I can be open to what might happen: maybe he is the love of my life, maybe he is going to be a lesson I need to learn, maybe he is just a hot guy passing me in a bar who is nothing more than that, and maybe he is the guy that is going to give me chlamydia and drain my bank account. Releasing expectation and my storyline, allows for something bigger to happen. The lack of release causes me to concretize something passing and fix it in place. Holding on to this particular guy or moment might be something I regret for a very long time.
Grasping will ensure that I make something temporary, fixed. I won’t say permanent because nothing is permanent. But if I just observe and ask myself: what is this hot guy in bar pulling up for me? I can stand back and watch the storylines spin. It is truly fascinating. Before the hot guy makes it to the bathroom, I have married him, traveled the world with him and divorced him. Wow! What a trip - the scary part is that my mind does this all the time with everything. The hot guy in the bar is just a metaphor for my mind's innate nature to allow my perceptions to solidify thoughts and expectations into my reality. If I can come back to the present moment, he is just a hot guy walking through a bar. Nothing more and nothing less. What happens next is not a foregone conclusion - it is rich with possibility, infinite possibilities. Pretty radical to allow myself to rest there - with no hope of fruition.
