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Sometimes, we need to trust our bodies, STFU, and keep it moving.
The higher mind is the gateway to God’s infinite intelligence. When the higher mind guides decision-making, we always do the right thing.
∞
I’m a staff member at a neighborhood park, and I love my job.
I don’t love everything about it, though, and the main part that I don’t love is the $20/hour pay. If the Will Write for Food plan doesn’t work out, I’ll need to step up my ca$h money dance game and get a job that pays more to keep up with life and the tax man.
The other part about my job that I don’t love is that it sometimes gets mundane. On slow days when I’m uninspired to write or read, it can get downright boring. If I get writer’s block and stop banging out classics, I’d look into getting a job with more complex duties and responsibilities, even if the money part was right. My boss isn’t going anywhere, but if a director position opened up at another park, I’d have some decisions to make about whether or not to apply.
But for now, I couldn’t ask for a better work situation, despite the occasional shift when things pop off. The job doesn’t come with benefits, but one of its perks, along with free smiles from kids and free yoga on Thursdays, is that employees get to use the weight room inside the headquarters building. I haven’t taken advantage of this perk, as I always work out with my wife at Planet Fitness, where I piggyback off her membership that allows free guests.
Once, my wife couldn’t work out at our usual time, and I was on my own. Planet Fitness doesn’t allow memberships unless you provide a bank account, which tells you everything you need to know about whether they’ll try to lock you in when you want to cancel, and I don’t rock with that sort of business model. It was too chilly for the outdoor workout I do with resistance bands and TRX straps, so I headed over to Park Board Headquarters to use my perk and pump up.
When I asked the human resources front desk attendant what I had to do to gain permission to use the weight room, she looked at me like I was asking her to defend a dissertation on quantum physics. I wasn’t surprised that this mission wasn’t going smoothly. Most of us are so stressed and tired from bills and cash money dancing that we forget how to think critically, and even the simplest tasks seem like labors requiring feats of Herculean mental fitness.
Eventually, we figured out that I needed to fill out a waiver form, and she handed me one to sign, which I did. She said my work ID badge would allow access to the gym starting tomorrow and wished me a good day. When I asked if I could use the gym today, she looked at me like I had lost my mind and reminded me that my badge would grant access to the gym tomorrow, not today. I said I understood, but I would be grateful to use the facility today, please and thank you. All someone had to do was open the door for me, or I could even wait for someone to do it.
The attendant, a sister in her 60s with close-cropped silver-gray hair and dark brown skin smooth as chocolate, had had enough of me. She explained that she could relay my request to the Big Dawg H.R. person who was in a Zoom meeting if I wanted. The stern look on her face and the arch in her eyebrow told me that asking her to interrupt her boss in the middle of a meeting was an unsound thing to do. Even though my gut told me to let this one slide and keep it moving, I asked her anyway after mentally reviewing my request and determining that it was eminently reasonable. After all, I had signed the waiver.
Auntie Sister shook her head and disappeared into the labyrinth of cubicles to bring my request to the big boss. She was shaking her head when she re-emerged from the maze to confirm that I would not be taking my fitness talents to the park board weight room that day. As she bid me farewell, she gave me the sort of look you give someone who wears a Tinkerbell costume on the subway. She looked at me like I was special.
The next day, I got a rejection email from the Big Dawg H.R. person telling me that I was underqualified for a position I had applied for three weeks earlier that I almost didn’t apply for because I was way overqualified. I had no doubt the sudden rejection was related to what went down the previous day. And I knew, sure as Shiva, that this was how it would go with any other applications I submitted that came across the Big Dawg H.R. person’s desk. She wouldn’t remember what I said, but she’d remember how I made her feel: duper annoyed. The most frustrating part was that I didn’t get what I did wrong. I was clueless.
About a week later, with some space around it, I saw what I did wrong. As a former lawyer, I knew I had done what mattered: waived liability. But from the H.R. folks’ perspective, I wasn’t allowed to use the gym until the magic badge made the door open and light up green. That’s how it worked. Duh. The way they viewed it, I was behaving like an obstinate jerk. They probably had a few good laughs at my expense where the punchline went something along the lines of, “That boy a damn fool!”
With this awareness came a flood of understanding that I would be miserable having a job where I had to work with bureaucrats at a big bureaucracy like a big city park board. These sorts of maddening red-tape situations would happen all the time. It wouldn’t just be silly stuff like personal weight room privileges at stake but also meaningful stuff like lunches and team uniforms for the kids. No, thank you.
Even though I’m grateful the experience with the H.R. folks showed me that I don’t have a future with the Park Board beyond my current job, I’m still disappointed about how things went. I take joy in the fact that I’ve improved my self-awareness, yet in this instance, I completely misread the room.
More accurately, I lacked the words to express my feelings. I knew in my gut that it was a bad move to persist in my quest to use the gym, but because I lacked the words to express how I knew, I plowed ahead anyway.
Sometimes, the body just knows, even if we lack the words to express our feelings. The higher mind helps us navigate life by sending subtle sensations to the body that signal what to do. If we fail to listen to our bodies, the higher mind often makes us sick, sore, tired, or otherwise incapacitates us to prevent us from going down certain paths. As our connection to Presence deepens, we’ll improve at identifying our emotions and expressing what we’re feeling.
The first step is learning how to trust the body. I’m still learning how to trust my body, as I’m overcoming 44 years of programming telling me to do the exact opposite. When we engage the higher mind, we learn to trust the body. Smiling and lightly resting the tongue on the roof of the mouth help awaken the higher mind and keep it engaged. In my second book, Good Vibes, I go into greater detail about how this process works.
More often than not, our bodies tell us exactly what we need to know. The key is learning how to tune in.
