I’ve been looking at ‘shoulds’ today. A lot of folks believe they don’t have any ‘shoulds’ left. If so, I bow humbly to your magnificence. And I’d ask you, is that really true? How much of what is taken for granted is actually a ‘should’?

Here is a short list off the top of my head:

🔜Your life is not your own. You should consider the people in your life and how they will be affected.

🔜If you react to someone’s behavior, that’s on you, not them. You should be better than that.

🔜If you are actually awake you should accept those who hurt you. The hurt is a sign that you have work to do.

🔜If you feel the need to speak up against certain behaviors, you should do more shadow work and uncover what you haven’t seen yet.

🔜You should be responsible rather than trying to find your peace, happiness and joy. Your happiness should not come first.

🔜For God’s sake, good parents don’t walk aways from their children, even if they are grown. Parents should sacrifice.

🔜You should avoid the taboos, and if you can’t do that, at least avoid letting other people know that you don’t see them as taboo: sexual isms, atheism, political isms.

🔜You should be kind nice friendly cooperative, and don’t forget that they look a particular way and it’s not upending tables in the marketplace.

🔜You should behave, speak, and listen, in ways that are acceptable not the ways that aren’t.

🔜should, should, should

Many of these are conscious constraints. We know they are there but we don’t necessarily realize they are ways we hide our light under the bushel.

Some of them aren’t conscious. Those are tucked in the cracks of our lives, silently orchestrating how we feel, what we do, and what we are willing to say. They are the reasons we say ‘yes’ when we want to say ‘no’, why we don’t speak up or walk away, why even after we have walked away, we feel remorse and our hearts continue to break.

We haven’t yet truly grokked that we can love someone and choose not to be around that someone, that we can love from afar and that it is just as powerful, perhaps even more so, than staying in the frame.

I go to an amazing body worker. I do not believe I would still be in-body without her. Today, while I was on the table, one of these stories showed up for clearing. I knew the story was there. I just didn’t realize how negatively it was impacting me. It was on a loop inside me, its roots wrapped around the upper right side of my chest. My ‘should’ was a story she hadn’t had to deal with personally, so her ability to see it so cleanly, so unaffectedly, to see where it was embedded in my body, was incredibly helpful.

When she was out of the room, I saw that ‘shoulds’ are demon hitchhikers and watched as I stopped the car, opened the door, and escorted this used-up demon to the curb. I don’t use the word, ‘demon’, traditionally. To me, demons are simply those parts of us clinging to separation, to programming that has not yet been dismantled.

I looked in the rear-view mirror as I drove away and the old guy was just standing there, becoming more and more opaque as my attention to it, my willingness to give it a ride, fell apart.

Are there more ‘shoulds’? Of course, there are. I’m not sure beingness-in-form ever moves through all of them. Even the idea that I should stay alive, I should remain in a functioning body, is a should, a part of the programming for these roles called a lifetime.

Some are functional, allowing the stage play to move between acts. Some are teachers, allowing the load to lighten, letting us recognize more of what we are before we got lost in the play. And some go unrecognized until we are ripe to see them, to feel into them, until we no longer need them for whatever reason was transpiring.

Sometimes they are integral to the end, or beginning, of a particular storyline. Sometimes they literally end our story, wrapping so tightly around the heart as to be called a heart attack. We think we are supposed to overcome all, that our job here is to see through all of our personal BS, but that’s not true. What a load that is … and oh so heavy!

If you can, lay it down. When it’s time the programming falls apart, bit by bit. Holding the idea that it should be happening faster, that you shouldn’t be dealing with ‘this’ still, that you should be awake by now, or whatever story you’re telling yourself, is just another ‘should’ to add to the pile that one day, one lifetime, will dissolve in front of your eyes.

Until then … live, love, dance, protest, stand up, speak out, hide, wish you’d said something different, say yes when you mean no … or not. You do you.

Image: WordPress AI by Amaya