Deepak Chopra wrote a book awhile ago called “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success.” I have alluded to it a few times on this blog already. I originally got this book many years ago from my step-mom. Although I read it back then, I never really took to it. It stayed in my library many years unexamined, until last year when I picked it back up, and, finding it newly relevant to what I was working on, began to keep it around as a book I refer to often.
There are many helpful reminders and insights in the book. Among my favorite are the ideas about giving up attachment. Here is a really great passage on the subject:
This moment–the one you’re experiencing right now– is the culmination of all the moments you have experienced in the past. This moment is as it is because the entire universe is as it is.
When you struggle against this moment, you’re actually struggling against the entire universe. Instead, you can make the decision that today you will not struggle against the whole universe by struggling against this moment. This means that your acceptance of this moment is total and complete. You accept things as they are, not as you wish they were in this moment. This is important to understand. You can wish for things in the future to be different, but in this moment you have to accept things as they are.
The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, by Deepak Chopra, p57
I love the idea that when we struggle against the present moment, we are in fact struggling against the entire Universe! We’re not just resisting one idea, or one moment in time, but we are fighting the Is-ness of the moment! It’s a powerful reminder to me that accepting the moment is much bigger than it may seem. It is literally about being in Harmony with the entire Universe.
And fans of the Law of Attraction, take heart! As Chopra says, you can wish for the future to be different. You can, in fact, design the future. Yet this current moment already has been created. You must accept it as it is in order to have peace in the now. This will free you to use that brilliant mind of yours to create different outcomes in the future.
I am definitely finding myself better able to release resistance and come more fully into the present. Meditation is helped. Concepts from this book and others are helping. Stopping and paying attention to what is currently going on in the here and now helps. I love the possibilities of fully accepting the moment, and giving up attachment. There is much freedom and ease in allowing the moment to be as it is.
Related to giving up attachment is Chopra’s succinct, useful information on how we ought to give up needing to defend our point of view:
If you observe people around you, you’ll see that they spend ninety-nine percent of their time defending their points of view. If you just relinquish the need to defend your point of view, you will in that relinquishment, gain access to enormous amounts of energy that have been previously wasted.
When you become defensive, blame others, and do not accept and surrender to the moment, your life meets resistance. Any time you encounter resistance, recognize that if you force the situation, the resistance will only increase. You don’t want to stand rigid like a tall oak that cracks and collapses in the storm. Instead, you want to be flexible, like a reed that bends with the storm and survives.
The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, by Deepak Chopra, p60
The idea of defenselessness resonates deeply to me, since I have found that I just cannot control other people’s point of view, try as I might! I have realized that it just seems pointless to get caught up in trying to change other people’s points of view. There are so damn many points of view, after all! And most of them aren’t the same as mine. So why waste my time worrying about it? I find the invitation of this passage—to release the need to be right–very inviting, something I already leaned towards but now even more strongly do. When you do this, you are freed up to project your views confidently and trust they will reach those who are ready to hear them.
I also think that I very much need to keep taking in the message in this book. It can be so easy to get attached! It can happen automatically, and there you are, suddenly all wound up in being right. One of the things I most love about this blog is that it allows me to discuss topics that I am working on for myself.
Apparently I still need to work on giving up attachment and the need to be right!