Expand, not contract

This came to me during a meditation a few weeks back, and it’s felt right as I’ve continued to move through life. (Or, as I’ve let life move through me? Have you heard that concept before, that we’re the universe experiencing being human? Or, we are the universe experiencing itself? I think Neil deGrasse Tyson said it…)

It’s this idea, this awareness, of how when something new arises, a change, we—humans, animals, all of us—have the natural reaction to contract. To hide, to go inward, to shy away from. It’s a form of a protection. It’s also a form of rejection, I think. Of rejection of something that may be a wonderful thing. Different can mean scary, but not bad. It can be good scary. Exciting. (My friend and I started to say “excitey.”)

I’ve heard this concept referenced often in money consciousness, too. Rather than saying, for example, I want to do this (a trip, a career change, a move), so I need to save money, it’s instead about opening up to attracting in more. Creating space to welcome in the resources and opportunities, an act of trust.

So, I remind myself. Be aware of where and when you contract, maybe explore why. Gently, curiously. Consider, instead expanding into it. Even consider considering a different initial reaction is expansion in itself.

May we continue to expand, to ripple, to “flow… in ever widening rings of being,” like Rumi says.

Expand, not contract. Abundance, and not lack.

The difference between 4 miles and 24 miles

Is actually nothing, except creating the space for it.

I had this thought during a recent 4.5-mile Wednesday night run with Venice Run Club. I ran the Los Angeles Marathon in late March, blooming into spring, and since then, I’ve enjoyed flowing back into a more varied fitness routine, which usually includes running about one day a week. I was pushing at that point in that run, calibrating to keep myself at that intersection of personal challenge and ease + enjoyment, a space where I’d found much to come in the past and consider ideal. It felt like so many moments of so many other runs in that all it felt like there was, was that very moment. It didn’t matter the length of the run it was part of.

In it, in that very moment, and all we have ever is this very moment, whenever and wherever that is, this actually doesn’t feel any different from any other run. Four miles, to fourteen miles, to 24 and more. You just prepare differently, and create the space. Train up to it, know you can do it, take the time to do it. And when you’re in it, you’re just with it.

I’ve heard a similar recommendation in relation to thinking about wealth, or financial abundance: It’s just about creating the mental space for it. In that, the deservingness for it. $80k and $80m is a different scope/ It takes up different space, and still, it’s all money. How do we prepare for it? ( “What if” positive thought play is a recommendation, especially for women, because women are socially conditioned to do this much less than men, of thinking and playing in the space of financial abundance. So, what if, I receive a financial windfall, X amount? What would I do with that? How would I manage it? What would I want to do with it?)

I wrote some additional things about running and the marathon, and the whole process (writing, running, all of it) felt expansive and cathartic. Posts are: