The Task Ahead

FRI., DEC. 21, 1990, 6:34 AM
FARM, STUDY

As I see it, you need one more “boost” to get you moving toward writing, typing, publishing, and mailing the Ruminations due out this season. You obviously must do this before you go on your trip, and that departure is now less than two weeks off. Ah, time!

Your theme shall be non-attachment as a Christian virtue. I shan’t tell you what to write, but you shall have to rediscover Teachings that speak to this virtue, for I certainly want to be part of the dialogue. Perhaps the balance will be a bit more toward your thoughts, rather than having more from Me than your/Our page limit allows.

I want you to be committed to this task without being attached to it. This means that you will regard it as a high priority, you will give it your good attention, but you will do it as a service to Me rather than as something you must do well for some acclaim or reward. Success in your life work required that you publish, which meant that you had to impress editors with the quality of what you wrote. With these Letters, called Ruminations, you offer them as a gift to Me, without worry about the consequences. Oh, you do enjoy hearing, from time to time, that readers… even a particular reader… profit from what you put together and send out. But you are to keep sending it to some people who have never responded. You do your part, and I’ll do Mine.

Yesterday Lenore caught you in a situation of attachment. You were over concerned with having your Christmas tree look just right, and you became overfrustrated with lights that would not work. A happy task had become a chore, and she had to tell you that you were “no fun to trim a tree with.” That’s a small example of attachment. You should have been enjoying the process. Instead you were too concerned with perfection.

As you know, your culture is one that encourages attachment. You can be responsible and not be attached. You can be committed and not be attached. You were committed to teaching the Foundations class well, but now the term has ended, and you easily give up this commitment and focus on new opportunities. “One day at a time” is a slogan of non-attachment. Live each day fully and put off destructive behaviors until tomorrow. When tomorrow comes live it as a today. And hence the good is magnified, and the bad tends to diminish.

When you make lists and try to prepare for some future be ever aware of how such planning affects the present. Know that I do not call you yet to live only in the present. That is one of the rewards of old age, and you are not yet there. You must still plan and prepare, but the balance is changing. You wonder what your life would have been like if you had not been attached in ways that brought professional success. And still you realize that you have been given awards by your professional organizations even as you did not work hard for such awards. Instead you have been a committed member, but not one attached to certain measures of success and to receiving certain awards. Gently put away yearnings for recognitions that you have not achieved.

It has been good that you have truly considered moving from this house and even from this Farm. This has broken your attachment to this place, even as it is the best place for you, now and in the near future. You can feel how your appreciation for it has expanded as your attachment has receded. Appreciate what you have, but know there is nothing you truly need. Enjoy your relative independence, but know that a time of dependence may become dominant… and it also can be enjoyed.