To Move or Not to Move

“The Gods only go with you if you put yourself in their path. And that takes courage”. We looked at a house for rent yesterday, my husband and I. It was in a Mission Canyon, an amazing area deep in the mountains, and yet only 5 minutes away from downtown Santa Barbara. rnWe toyed with the idea of moving to Santa Barbara for some years now, but never quite took action. Santa Barbara is amazingly beautiful, but then so is Ojai. Santa Barbara has the gorgeous beaches and ocean breeze in a summer, rather than the incredible heat of Ojai, but the cost of renting a house there is astronomical. And so we thought about it, and talked about it, weighed all those factors for years, and yesterday I saw this house. rnIt seemed perfect when seen on photos. As we drove towards it we found that the house is beautifully positioned on the side of a mountain, overviewing the canyon and the ocean … and a vast expanse of burned down tree stumps and dry, blackened earth, scorched by the recent fire. The house itself had a wall of windows that let in plenty of sunlight … and plenty of heat, and there was no air conditioning. The living room was incredibly spacious, but … our bed would not fit into the bedroom. There were great two lofts that would be perfect for our two home offices … but there weren’t enough closet space for us to fit our office materials and equipment. The house was just like the idea of moving to Santa Barbara … it was almost perfect, only it wasn’t. We could make it work if we had to, but we didn’t want to “make it work”. But then it was ALMOST perfect. rnI could not make up my mind. I could not stop thinking about it. All the way back to Ojai I sat in a fog of confusion. Once I decided that the house wouldn’t work I would immediately start thinking about all the benefits of moving, once I decided to move I immediately thought of all the things that wouldn’t work. I came home and my first thought was “I love this house, we are staying here”. Then I took my dog for a walk and thought “I could be walking my dog on my favorite beach now, rather than down this street”. I could not stop thinking about it, and the more I thought the more lost and confused I became. rnI woke up this morning feeling just as confused and lost as I did last night. It didn’t feel good. I felt anxious, tense, unhappy. As I felt into it some more, allowed my feelings to open, let go of my mind, let go of my thoughts, I realized that there was a very good reason for me to be confused. As I became present as who I am, I realized that I was distracting myself from being just that, from being open, being present. I realized that all the doubts, all the frantic thoughts, all the discussions I had with myself, arguments, decisions, plans and considerations, were there so that I would not be. rnAs long as I was lost in my thoughts, lost in planning, managing, changing, I did not have to be present in my life, I did not have to be responsible for being myself, expressing myself, for writing my book, creating, designing. rnI was distracting myself from being who I am by changing things. rnThere is a difference between changing, and opening, I realized this morning. There is a difference between rearranging the pieces on a board, moving around the circumstances of my life, and opening to who I am, being fully present as who I am. rnChange becomes obsolete when I open to myself. There is no need to move things, rearrange things, switch things, turn wrong into right, bad into good, broken into fixed. rnWhen I am present, I am open in an unlimited, boundless space where unimaginable things can happen. A space where things are not only right, good, better, but they are more incredible that I could have ever imagined, simply because they are the expression of me. A space where my life is not only more abundant, more peaceful, more safe, but it is beyond all those distinctions, beyond any distinctions, beyond anything that is considered “possible”, simply because it is an expression of who I am as God, and there are no limits to God. rnThere is no limit to who we are. There are no limits to what we can open to. There are no limits to what can happen when we “put ourselves in Gods’ path”.