Many years ago I was a commercial pilot and flight instructor. In our company we used small single-engine Piper aircraft to train students. One of the most challenging lessons for students (including me when I was a student) was spin control.
Many fatal aviation accidents in those days were caused by pilots losing control and spinning into the ground. So spin control was a required part of the flight curriculum.
Teaching spin control was simple task. The instructor and student would climb to a safe altitude, and then deliberately put the plane into a spin. No better (or scarier) way to learn spin control.
The students’ first gut reaction was invariably wrong. They would hold the plane’s controls tightly, only making the spin worse. Ironically, the best way to recover from a spin in the particular planes we used was to release the controls. You simply let go and the plane would recover by itself.
Isn’t that a great metaphor for life? Just letting go. Detaching.
Here’s what Spirit has to say:
“In your modern world many of you feel like your lives are spinning out of control. This is a time of great change and, often, you are holding on far too tightly. You’re holding onto everything — your values, your loved ones, your material possessions, even your spiritual ideals — far too tightly.
“So the spinning continues, in an ever-increasing downward spiral. You feel lost, hurt, not knowing where or to whom to turn. Now this is not a bad thing. For you will eventually learn ‘spin recovery.’
“The value of spinning out of control is that it’s a grand opportunity for you to practice allowance. So what does allowance have to do with the state of your lives and your world? Everything!
“Allowance is simply letting go, letting everything and everyone (including yourselves) be okay just as they are, where they are. Until you, as a human race, get beyond needing others to live as you think they should, you will continue spinning out of control. You need to practice detaching.
“But you, individually — in your own personal lives — can practice spin recovery and get your life back into ‘level flight.’ It doesn’t matter what the rest of the world is doing. Even if every other human on the planet is spinning out of control, you have the power to live a peaceful, joyful, abundant, detached life.
“Just let go of your controls, detach from the outcomes, and you will be amazed at what happens.”
What do you do when you find your life spinning out of control? Please comment below.
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