Sometimes you just have to go with the flow. This has nothing to do with Judaism or any particular religion. However, I think that almost every spiritual or religious tradition has a teaching about being led by God or feeling guided. I think being in the flow is a bit like feeling God’s hand pushing you along and allowing yourself to be pushed. Going with the flow means reaching out and taking the hand that’s offered an following where it leads.
This takes faith. It takes trust.
Sometimes going with the flow looks different than at other times. For the last few days, it looked like this for me:
I’ve been focused for several days on lining some things up for a new project of mine. In conjunction with this, I needed to land some new speaking engagements in different area–writing and publishing. This morning, despite some reservations I had initially, I had a conversation with someone from an Internet site that offered me a chance to list myself as a speaker. I’ve known about this service for several years. I missed a call from the salesperson just the other day and reluctantly rescheduled it.ย On this call, the man assured me I’d land a few speaking gigs this way. I decided to risk the money and become a member of his site.
I hung up the phone, and less than an hour later had a conversation with someone I know about planning a few classes. As it turned out, she was very interested in running writing and publishing classes. We decided to plan something for April in addition to one of my Kabbalah of Conscious Creation classes.
I hung up the phone and within the hour I received an email from someone who seen an email about a class I will be teaching on writing next week. She clicked on my bio and saw that I also speak on spirituality and Judaism and decided to ask me to speak at her church. (Although this talk is unrelated to my new project, it is related to other projects of mine.) She offered to rent me a room for writing classes; the room is affordable, and I won’t be charged if the class doesn’t work out for some reason.
I wonder what might have happened had I not signed up for the online speakers’ bureau…It’s true the new speaking engagement did not come through that bureau, but by paying for the service I went with the flow. I had said I wanted more speaking engagements, and I accepted the opportunity presented to me to obtain more. I didn’t balk at the money and simply said, “Yes.” What followed actually were several speaking engagements if you include the writing classes and the Kabbalah of Conscious Creation class.
Today I also went with the flow. I had been thinking about a new title for a book of mine. Suddenly something popped into my head. Instead of putting it off, I ran to the computer and wrote it down. Before I knew it, I had a new subtitle and a whole new pitch to send to my agent.
These are work related incidents, but we can go with the flow in many areas of our life. How do you go with the flow? Have you felt the push to flow recently? Did you get in the river and row upstream or allow yourself to flow downstream with God guiding your boat?
More often than not we row our boats upstream. We don’t take the hand held out. We go in the opposite direction from that which we feel directed to go.
Today, notice the gentle push. Look for the hand. See the signs…Leave the oars at home, and simply float.
