Are you much too weighted down with worries, concerns and insecurities? Do you wish that you were a lot lighter person than you often experience yourself to be? If so, I think that I have an approach that can help.

In the previous post, I mentioned a quote from a book I once read. The quote has been very helpful to me in lightening my own load of self-preoccupations and may do the same for you.

The quote is “Angels fly, because they take themselves lightly.”

To me, taking ourselves lightly means getting beyond our usual ego-centered concerns. Whenever I am into my rights, my needs, my resentments, my situation, I am doing the opposite of taking myself lightly. I am heavy (and sometimes ponderously) into myself. And if my wife is around then “heavy” is one of the words that she might use to describe me.

On the other hand, when I am focused outside myself, and in particular when I am involved in the welfare of someone else, I really do take myself lightly — in fact, I’m pretty much not thinking of myself at all. This is one of the tremendous benefits that I have found in being a therapist: When I am working with a couple or with an individual, I totally cease to be a problem to myself almost always. I am focused on the couple or person before me, not on me.

At times, as a result of taking myself lightly, I can “fly,“ in the sense of being spontaneous, intuitive, open, connected in a way that I definitely am not when I am heavy and caught in myself.

The key is to get beyond our small self. The best way to do that is to love.

We’ll get back to the angels in the next post.

Have you ever been seized by a quote from somewhere that simply won’t leave you alone? Maybe it’s from a bood you’ve been reading, and the first time through you underline it. Maybe you go back and read that quote enough times, until you finally write it down and start carrying it around.

This experience has happened to be a number of times. The quotes that get this treatment are always ones that speak to me in a special way. They seem to say, “This is for you. Pay attention to it.” The meaning of such statements is seldom entirely clear to me. It speaks to me, and yet I don’t for sure know what it means. I’m meant to spend time with the statement, do my best to figure out what it means and then, make it mine, by following it, in some sense.  

Of all the statements that have spoken to me in a special way, the one that has hung around the longest is this one:

“Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.”

Now before you read further, take a moment and give some thought to what that statement actually means.

“Angels fly because they take themselves lightly” speaks to me partly because I am not naturally very good at taking myself lightly. In fact, I can, at times, be quite heavy and dark — rather than light — with fuss, or fear, or discouragement, or loneliness — or any other of the characteristically heavy conditions that weigh us down and make it hard to take ourselves lightly.

I would like to take myself more lightly than I do, and the “Angels fly…” statement is beginning to help.

An invitation: Please join in. We’ve got the makings of a good conversation here — better than a monologue.