JOURNAL: October 18, 2006

I’m learning, a little each day, how to let go of life and allow it to be what it has to be, and yesterday afternoon I took some great steps forward in this educational process. It was a frustrating day in school for me, and by 3:00, I was feeling fairly discouraged about my abilities as a teacher. In my thinking, I was using a lot of “I” phrases: “I” was not a good teacher that day, “I” rushed through my lessons, “I” needed to read some books or go to a workshop to improve my teaching. It was as though “I” was the main source of labor and creativity in teaching, and “I” was carrying a load that had grown way too heavy. At one point, however, the thought came to me that I could simply release this burden because “I “ didn’t need to do any carrying. It became clear to me (and I’ve had this revelation countless times) that a far more powerful force was available to do all the carrying that needs to be done. In fact, this force (which some people call God) always does the carrying, even though it may seem like a separate entity called “me” is doing it. This realization gave me a wonderful sense of release and freedom. I saw that I no longer needed to carry the heavy weight of responsibility for what happens in my classroom. It was obvious that my students and I are floating on an irresistible and limitless river, and all I need to do is relax and let the river do its work. I can dump my entire teaching load on this all-powerful river because I know it can easily carry the weight.