“Timing is none of your business.”
~~Abraham Hicks
Ah, time. This was a big stumbling block for me. I would be lying if I said I was completely over it, but I’d like to think that I do at least have one leg over the top of the block.
According to Abraham Hicks a lot of the questions people ask about their desires trip them up. Wondering who is going to bring it, where it’s going to be, and so on throws a big, shinny wrench in their vibration. If we could trust that the Universe will take care of the who, what, where, when, and how and just focus on why we want it, things would go a lot smoother for us.
Funnily enough, I’ve had no problems dropping who, what, and where. I’ve had so many instances of wondering about something and then having someone – my mom, a friend, a lady talking on her cell on the train – bring up the answer in passing without me even mentioning that I was thinking about it. No, “who” is no problem for me.
My problems are when and how. I’ll leave how for another time. 🙂
The first time I heard Abraham say that timing was none of our business, I was almost angry. Haha. “What good is it if I get it 10 years after I stop wanting it,” I thought. But after I got over my initial indignation, I figured I should at least spend more than three seconds thinking about it before rejecting the idea completely. Everything I had heard them say up to that point had made wonderful sense, after all.
So I asked myself what was so important about the timing that I wanted. Was I sure that the time I was insisting on was actually the best time?
After a few seconds of thinking about this, I remembered a perfect example involving my good friends Danushka and Yoko.
After I had been living in Tokyo for over a year, I decided to look into taking some calligraphy classes. I checked out a few places, but nothing really seemed to be a good fit for different reasons. I let it drop instead of trying to force it. A while after that I mentioned to another friend Junko-San, who I had first met as the teacher in one of my Japanese classes, that I was interested in calligraphy. I didn’t ask her to help me find a class or anything, just mentioned it. More time passed, and then one day Junko-San told me that one of the other volunteer teachers was a calligraphy teacher who taught private lessons in her house, which was only about a 30 minute walk away from me (I could have taken the train, but I quite like walking).
A chance to get private lessons in a Japanese home instead of in a big group setting? Perfect! There was only one catch. She preferred to have at least three students in a group to make the numbers work. Did I have any friends who wanted to join?
I hadn’t even considered if any of my friends would be interested in doing lessons with me calligraphy, so I asked around. Yoko and Danushka were both in. We started the lessons with our new Sensei and i began one of the best parts of my time in Tokyo.
If I had pushed ahead with starting the lessons when I initially wanted to, I’m sure it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. I would probably have ended up on my own in a class of 15 or so people who I could barely communicate with (my Japanese can best be described as shaky) with far less attention from the teacher.
Instead I got to do something great with my two buds, found out lots of little things about Japanese households, learned callgraphy in a nice, intimate setting at a wonderful price, and got to practice my Japanese (Yoko’s fluent English and eternally patient translations were a necessity since our Sensei and her husband only spoke a little English and my Japanese skills are… shaky). And as if all of that wasn’t cool enough, our Sensei was very involved in the international relations association of the city I lived in, so we ended up going to some of the events that the group organized, like tea ceremonies and concerts. The kind of stuff I love to do.
The Universe packed a whole bunch of my other desires into my one simple desire for calligraphy lessons.
I don’t know why a while passed between when I initially wanted to start lessons and when I actually did. Maybe our Sensei’s schedule had to clear up. Who knows? But I do know that if I could go back in time and change the timing, I definitely wouldn’t. Because everything worked out beautifully in the end.