I have been struggling with a few things recently. As I have been fighting myself I have noticed that it is like a Chinese finger trap. We look at this today.
A child’s toy
I think we all played with Chinese finger traps when we were children. It’s that tube that is woven of bamboo. You put one finger in each end. As you attempt to pull your fingers out the bamboo tightens on your fingers and you are trapped.
No matter how hard you pull you cannot get out. It only gets tighter. The only way to get your fingers out is to relax. You push your fingers toward each other and the bamboo loosens. When the bamboo is loose enough you can carefully pull your fingers out.
Fighting yourself
As I have been fighting with myself recently I have seen this child’s toy as an analogy. It seems to me that when we fight with ourselves we wind up in the same type of situation.
The more we struggle the more we enmesh ourselves in the trap. We are causing the trap by struggling. We get caught up in the struggle and forget that we are causing the trap to tighten.
When we finally relax and get back into the moment we see that there is nothing else that we need to do. Simply by relaxing and being with the situation the trap opens up and we can now extract ourselves. Simple – but easily forgotten during the struggle.
Nobody wins
Here is one more little idea for today. Whenever we fight ourselves we always lose. Fighting ourselves means that we are not at peace with ourselves. When this happens we always lose to the struggle.
Once again, the trick is to recognize when we are fighting ourselves and stop fighting. As noted earlier, when we stop the struggle we get back into the moment and align ourselves with our true self.
I will keep you updated as I extricate myself from my personal finger trap.
Until Friday –
Es kava turen hai
We work towards an identical goal.
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April 16, 2009 at 18:41
This is a very meaningful reflection. Societies often seem to teach human beings to struggle in order to prove themselves. As a person realizes he has nothing to prove to anyone, it becomes natural to relax and to discover another kind of existence. The Chinese finger trap teaches how its a useful exercise to discover what it means to reverse condition the mind, body and spirit. You uncover simple truths.