Balance ~ Peace ~ Wisdom: Distill the Essentials.

By Mary G. Holland
February 18, 2015

These are my themes for 2015.  No goals this time.  Just themes: Balance, Peace, Wisdom.

I’m 60 next month.  I’ve accumulated so much stuff, so much knowledge, I know how to do and make so many things, solve an infinite array of problems.  So many ideas, my head’s always spinning, thinking.  I wear myself out.  There’s so much to learn and do.

After a lifetime of over-doing, involved in too many things, too many unfinished projects, too much nervous energy and activity, I’ve decided to regroup, thin out my stuff, and clear my head. Time to make room for what happens next.

I’ve learned I can manifest anything I set my mind to, and it’s getting easier these days. No need to hang onto stuff I once used because I might use it again someday.  If I need it again, it’ll show up.  For now, just let go.  (That’s my head and intuition, not my heart, talking.)

When I look into something, my research is deep, complete, looking at every angle possible.  I’ll take ideas and solutions from an entirely unrelated field and apply them to the problem at hand.  I analyze things to death, ad nauseum.

I’ve accumulated a huge collection of research and data on so many topics.  And in many cases, I’ve done further analysis on it and made useful correlations.  Now what do I do with it?  This represents so much work to pull all of this data together.  No one wants printed material these days.

The topics I understand are often so wide ranging, so diverse, they bear little relationship to each other. Taken as a whole, it’s the work of a dabbler? Perhaps. So it’s not as useful when presented as an expert’s single website containing a wellspring of single-topic information.

I’ve met a handful of other “Renaissance” folks in my life, and we’re all faced with the same problem.

Cayce and Kryon say this is a characteristic of “Old Souls” – explaining we’ve lived so many lifetimes, have so much accumulated experience, with thousands of vocations over our soul’s journeys.  Not sure if that’s true or not.  Yet often I find I just know stuff, without any basis, to the point where some people find it uncanny, even creepy.  For example…

When I encounter master crafters, practicing trades that I’ve not played with in this life, and watch their hands move over the materials, I can literally, although subtly, feel what they are feeling in their hands.  In that moment I’m vicariously experiencing how to move the materials to make them do what I want.  I know I can practice that craft also.

Then if I buy the materials, the tools, and try the skill myself, I very quickly pick up the skill, far faster than most would.  Within half a dozen tries, I am a very competent craft person. Then I lose interest.  It’s as if, “Been there, done that.”  It’s time to move on.  So, maybe I have …?

Now I have a house bursting with tools, supplies, and materials for a myriad of trades and hobbies, a head that’s filled with knowledge, how-to information, sources, and techniques.  The list goes on.

My parents grew up in the Great Depression, my father in poverty.  They were always very careful about saving everything, belongings were precious.  These values ingrained themselves deeply in me.  Letting go is so hard to do.

Then the flip side of being profusely creative is what do you do with all this stuff that you create?  So I hold back.  If I fully released my creativity (which I’ve never done for more than a day or two) and just drew and painted, the work would accumulate so fast I’d be buried within a few weeks. Naturally, most would be crap, but a few would be few treasures.  Then what do I do with it?

I’ve learned I REALLY don’t like to sell.  Marketing and business people tell me I have to.  Yeah, I can, but nope, I’d rather someone else sell, who enjoys that.  I enjoy creating.  Why do I have to be good at both?  I believe people with complementary skills should partner up, for fair, mutual benefit, not to take advantage.  Unfortunately, so often it’s the latter.  Or we just don’t see eye to eye, long enough to achieve anything.

I’m trying to thin out now.  Tie up loose ends.  Each week, I sort out a few things, throw some out, take a load to charity, or list it to sell.  It’s slow, but steady progress.

I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.

I’m starting to think, so what?  Maybe that’s OK after all.

I’ve started teaching a bit, doing a little writing.

And I’ve noticed that when I hang out with others, often they get something out of my presence.

Maybe it’s enough to Just Be.