Have you ever watched a flock of birds in flight? One recent weekend was full of these sightings for me. It's been a mild fall, so perhaps now they're migrating.
The birds would swoop and soar, changing color simultaneously from dark to light as their wings shifted orientation toward the sun. One especially huge flock seemed to go from solid to aeroform from moment to moment. The shapes would merge and expand effortlessly. Total harmony of movement, total unity, but dependent on each bird doing its part.
This coincided with some prayerful work I'd been doing on God's will. Sometimes I find myself on my spiritual journey trying to puzzle out what God wants me to do. Does He want me to do this or that? Usually I'm the most puzzled when there's something in particular that *I* want to do, and I'm trying to noodle out whether God wants me to do it, too. It's that feeling of wanting something so badly that you just want it to be right, for a change.
Lately, though, it's that hungry feeling I've begun to suspect is the problem. I can't figure out God's will by asking whether He agrees with me or not. What I need to do is get my own will out of the way entirely. I need to silence that human will, put it aside, sacrifice it. Then God's will is simply what's happening. My willfulness keeps me from seeing God's will.
It's like the birds. We are ideas in the flock of divine Mind (to me another way of looking at God), and it's Mind that enables us to sing and soar. We spread our wings and fly on the currents of Mind. If we start thinking too much—left now, or right?—we might find ourselves colliding. But when we release our own will and simply feel the current, harmonious flight becomes natural and safe.
This "Mind-set" has had implications for how I run my business. I'm a freelance writer/editor, and when I launched as a freelancer a little over a year ago, I spent a lot of time planning exactly how my business was going to grow. I wrote a business plan, thought up strategies, devised clever tactics.
These were important steps in understanding my business and the landscape more thoroughly. But within a few months, I had set that plan aside. New ideas were coming to me weekly, daily, that I just had to act on. As I followed those ideas, they added up to a thriving business. I'm now thinking of expanding in ways I never thought of in that first business plan. Sure, when the new year comes I'll probably take a few days to craft a new plan, just to get my bearings and regroup. But if this year is any indication of how things are going to go, I'll have to stay flexible.
I believe now that God's will is that we exist in harmony, that we move through creation frictionless and free. I've seen that my own will often puts me at odds with others. I then try to get God to justify my position, to tell me that I'm doing the right thing. Funny, He seldom does. His message to me is instead, Peace, dear one. Trust Me. Then He sends ideas that get me going again.
Letting go of one's own will implies trust. Do we trust enough to know that the divine will is to give us all that we could ever want? Abundance and joy beyond our imagining?
Knowing that infinite Mind *wants* me to fly comforts me. I know I'll be able to soar higher on the winds of Mind than I ever could on my own.
Visit SpiritOnTheJob.com.
