Hands on or Hands Off?

As I started to picture the trees in the storm, the answer began to dawn on me. The trees in the storm don't try to stand up straight and tall and erect. They allow themselves to bend and be blown with the wind. They understand the power of letting go. Those trees and those branches that try too hard to stand up strong and straight are the ones that break. Now is not the time for you to be strong, Julia, or you, too, will break.

- Julia Butterfly Hill

Most of us will never learn the lesson that Julia learned while spending days living in a tree. However, most of us will face storms on the ground of our daily lives and face the question, How we will respond to the forces that challenge us? 

Spiritual teachings can confound us when they seem to prescribe contradictory instructions for how to respond to life circumstances. The affirmative, co-creative approach prescribes an, I can make it happen attitude. This approach applies the creative power of our minds to the field of infinite possibilities to declare and claim how life should unfold for us.  It is the power of intention brought to bear upon the unset jello of quantum probabilities that can bring a specific outcome into manifestation.  It often works because, as the latest science confirms, reality is not fixed, but alterable, not objective, but shaped in part by our perception of it.  This is an exciting, empowering principle that can be used for greater good in our lives.

The other side of this principle is a passive wisdom approach. The cliché for it is Let go, let God. It is the capacity to take our hands off the wheel of our lives, and trusting that an unseen Guide will steer us to greater good in our life. This can be a most difficult attitude to cop in the midst of a storm that seems sure to break us.  Our survival instincts and spiritual bravado would have us rear up and take a resolute stance to oppose the ill winds of circumstances that surely seem against us.

Understanding when to steer in the direction of our preferences and when to surrender navigation and control to the master Pilot is not necessarily an either/or proposition.  When we understand that our lives depend on a synergistic collaboration between the Infinite Mind of God and our own conscious awareness, we can be as ready to take the wheel as to release it. We can intend for our good and move confidently in the directions of our preferred life, all the while holding a deep pervasive knowing that Spirit is seeking to live our lives through us and as us.  The recognition of an indwelling love and intelligence seeking to express through the vessel of our life experiences grants us a willingness to surrender, accept and adapt to the path unimagined by our mortal minds.   

Every powerful hero's journey takes the hero to unimagined places, forces him/her to confront their deepest fears, and ultimately brings the adventurer home with an inner reward that enriches the soul precisely because they took the road of greatest challenge. As Joseph Campbell noted, We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the life that is waiting for us.