Take the time to sit with yourself and ask yourself how attached you are to yourself. If it were required of you to let go of yourself – your entire being as you today know it – how hard would you find that to do? Perhaps for some that kind of non-attachment comes easily. It depends on your upbringing (a lot depends on your upbringing, incidentally) and it depends on your life view. For some the need to hold tight to the self will be intense, the fear of forsaking, abandoning – all the emotive words – leaving, oneself to one’s own devices too huge to contemplate. I happen to think that until we let go of every single one of our preconceived notions about ourselves we will be trapped on the hamster-wheel of life. We will be bound to our own fates. In order to gain control, we need to lose control. We need to let go. It takes some bravery to step inside one’s own mind and do a stock-take. The longer you leave it, the more daunting the task. Best to visit with yourself often when you are young, and you are never going to be as young as today. Ironically, it is only by stepping inside of one’s mind that one can find the objectivity needed to separate yourself from the destiny you have prescribed for yourself. It takes some doing, too, to take your own destiny on, and change it. Destiny can be pretty set in its ways, like a deep-sleeping dragon. The thing to understand is that each small change you make will have an immediate effect on your future. Immediate. That is how powerful our hold over ourselves is. The bigger picture changes slowly, that is the way of things in this world. But it starts to change from the moment you make that first change. Choose to have an effect on your future because it will happen for you, regardless. Better to be in control – on some level – of where it is that you are going and what it is that you are doing. We do not reserve the right to control everything that happens to us in this life-space. Life as an everyday is too unpredictable to find ourselves ever getting complacent. Surely?
The problem is, we do get complacent as human beings. We become caught in the rut of routine (which speeds time up, incidentally – so break with routine for a slower life) and we follow our peculiar habits as humans, as attached to those as we are to the notion of ourselves. It makes a lot of sense to separate willingly with your own tradition. It teaches you something new about the self you are letting go of, every time.
The road to Utopia is not an easy road. You need smarts, wits, tenacity and a very good vehicle. It would be good if you could read from the stars, the sun. It would be advantageous if you had your own vision of perfection and were keen to strive towards it. You are advised to wear a seatbelt and to expect the unexpected. If you are not good at expecting the unexpected, then practice. Give yourself surprises until you get used to embracing the unknown. Do something new. It’s the only way forward. In this age of über-speed we need to know how to move smoothly with the chaos of an everyday. Do you realise how much information you are processing every minute? What are you absorbing, what are you hearing and adhering to? What you need to realise is that each moment of each day you are moulding your future with the choices you make based on what you respond to. That is how much control you have over your destiny. It is all in your hands. Unfortunately, a lot of people are dropping the ball.
C.J. Birch
C.J. Birch 
