Finding the Right Affirmational Aim

Starting and maintaining this website has been an incredible learning experience for me. It has taught me especially about the letting go of expectations via the frustration and pain of many things not working and not working out the way I wanted them too.

This last week I have grieved the possibility of Conscious Singles not working. Not that we are imminently on the verge but the subscription drive of the last month was very disappointing. I am still devoted to making it work but there is now, I realize, a limit to my energetic and financial commitment.

This website and the doing of it has also brought me much and I have been blessed in many ways by some of the positive feedback and especially the loving relationships I have developed with Cliff, James, Kris and Whit.

But the grieving and letting go of my hopes and expectations is spiritually, I think, a good thing. A good friend of mine and spiritual teacher was leading the seder on Passover last week and mentioned that in the Talmud it says Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. I had always thought this was a Buddhist saying and probably is. And what I understood from Buddhism is that it is our attachments that cause us suffering.

So letting go of the attachment that this website succeed financially is a way of not suffering for me. So I am, as I write this, endeavoring not to be in the future of my attachments but the gratitude of the now. For in the now it is much easier for me to be grateful and "choose love." Recognizing that in this moment, I lack for nothing.

However, I am bumfuzzled about how to think about or affirm what I want or prefer. It is difficult for me to do be doing the next right thing and not get attached to some future goal. In fact, it is today hard for me to vision the future and not feel a little foolish.

Again, things here are not dire. Just that I was way off as far as where I thought we would be and had not a clue about all the shit that could go wrong.

But what has been perfect about this is it also has given me the opportunity to become more of a half full perspectivist. To recognize with appreciation what is and has gone great.

And, one of the major joys for me about this site is the wonderfully wonderful folks that are joining. And I am open to suggestions about how to affirm success and stay centered with it. (And my sister/bookkeeper votes that one aspect of success have the color of money in it).

What do ya'll suggest my affirmational aim be.

~joel