That’s Me!
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(Lose the Net by Rasmus Faber Courtesy of Epidemic Music)
How amazing it is that good questions lead us so naturally to good answers, and that beautiful questions lead to even better answers! When we open ourselves to the things we don’t know, we’ve opened the doors to discovery and wonder and greater understanding.
I’m Scott Lennox and you’re listening to The Beautiful Question, a consideration of things that matter every day.
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I recently spoke about the power of letting go and what it’s like to come home to ourselves, unfettered, unbound, and completely liberated. I also talked about how easy it is for our lives to become child’s play again.
Join me this week as we take a deeper look. Stay with me.
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In the last episode, I mentioned that since I started radically letting go, I’m finding it easier to connect in more meaningful ways with the counseling clients I serve, and that I’m writing and painting and living my life with far greater ease now. This week, beginning with what I’ve been painting, I’ll share some of what’s been happening since I decided to release myself from the things that have been holding me back from being my most authentic self.
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As a special gift for someone this past Christmas, I painted a feather weightlessly floating on the surface of the water with a brooding sky in the background. After spending quite a few sessions working on it, I was extremely pleased with the outcome. So was the person who received it.
Not long after I painted it, a series of fascinating things began to happen with no real effort at all.
In an on-screen conversation with someone who had seen the feather painting on one of the easels behind me, she said, “I want one!” Insisting she was serious about it, she agreed to my price without hesitation. I was excited to have a new commission and got to work on it the following day. When she picked it up, she told me how pleased she is with it and talked about how she plans to have it framed and where she wants to hang it.
But the story hardly stops there.
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Compared to the way I approached the first painting, creating the second one was much more a matter of play than effort. Each time I stepped up to the canvas, I knew what to do without overthinking it or struggling with what needed to happen next. The painting came together just as beautifully as the first one, but in far less time. Once again, the word “effortless” comes to mind.
But the story doesn’t stop there either.
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In the weeks that followed, several other people asked me to paint unique versions of the floating feather for them, bringing the total to eight, not counting one more that I’ll give to friends in honor of the changes they are making in their lives.
Last week, when a friend came to pick up the feather he asked me to paint for him and his mother, he took one look at it and said, “That’s me!” When I asked what he meant, he told me he could see in himself the same qualities he saw in the feather that so gracefully floats on the surface of a moving stream—light, freedom, strength, resilience, gentleness, and perfect balance.
The same day, I sent another friend an image of the painting of the Brazos River she commissioned as an anniversary gift for her husband. The image I’m using as a reference is a photograph she took of their view of the River as if flows alongside their property thirty miles west of Fort Worth. Imagine my surprise when she sent back a message that said, “That’s me,” and went on to explain that she saw herself and her connection to nature and to God in the painting.
I had tears in my eyes as I read it.
Though I always think of the people whose paintings I’m creating while I’m working on them, it never entered my mind that they might see themselves in what I paint. My goal is that they might experience the peace and strength and mystery the paintings embody, but to my surprise and sheer delight, people are spontaneously taking steps beyond that and seeing themselves.
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My point in sharing all this is not to bring attention to myself or the work I’m doing, but to point to what’s behind the scenes that’s making it possible. Day by day, I’m learning that once we let go of our old habits and the outworn thoughts of restriction and self-limitation we’ve been holding, what follows arises from a deep and most essential place in us. It comes quite naturally from the wise and childlike part of us that is altogether open and lively and present.
I’m not suggesting that you’ll become an artist or a poet or a writer or counselor as you let go and embrace who you are (though in no way am I ruling those things out.) I’m saying you’ll struggle less and play more. I’m saying you’ll begin to feel the natural elation you knew as a child—the free flowing and life-breathing joy of being fully alive without constriction or the harshness of the imposed rules that suppress the wonderful human being you already Are.
But please don’t take my word for it.
Let go and see for yourself.
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This week’s Beautiful Questions are offered to inspire you to let go into your fullest life in ways that are meaningful and healthy and fulfilling. Here they are.
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Question One: When you stop and listen to yourself from the inside out, what little things do you become aware of that have been restricting you and keeping you from living fully?
Question Two: What simple changes in thought or behavior will you make this week to intentionally release yourself from some of those obstacles?
Question Three: Are you willing to be gently mindful of the changes that follow as you become more liberated and alive?
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More than ever, I invite you to write and tell me about your discoveries and the changes that happen as you keep letting go. The playful kid in me really wants to know.
As I say each week,
My Light with Your Light!
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I’m happy we can engage this way as we consider things that matter and what to do about them. If nothing else, I hope you feel inspired to look more deeply at ways of caring for yourself.
You can be further inspired by visiting my friends at Kosmos Journal. That’s K O S M O S Journal. Their mission is to inform, inspire, and engage global transformation in harmony with all life. You can easily find them online at Kosmos Journal dot O R G.
And at thebeautifulquestion.com, you can read the illustrated transcript of each podcast as you listen. We’ve also included an archive of all previous podcasts, including guided relaxation audios that can help you practice letting go on a daily basis.
If you find these podcasts useful, I encourage you to share them and tell others about them. That’s a great way of helping me get a voice of calm and collaboration and balance and encouragement out into the world. It’s a great way of spreading peace.
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I’m Scott Lennox, and this has been The Beautiful Question.
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The Beautiful Question is a One Light production, written, produced, and engineered by Scott Lennox at HeartRock Studios in Fort Worth, Texas, as a way of paying forward to life, being fully present, becoming better engaged with things that truly matter in a complex world, and committing to a healthier future for all of us.