The Permission Slip

What if we decided

that we didn’t need to live

with all those silly imaginary rules

we make up for ourselves?

“You must meditate for 20 minutes/day and exercise for 60.

You must spend 8 productive hours concentrating on work Monday-Friday

and you must never eat gluten

and you are only allowed sweet treats on Sundays.”

If we lived without these rules,

I think we would find

that our bodies still want to move

and our minds still crave stillness.

Our pallets still long for delicious fruit

and our hearts will never stop burning with passion.

And then it will feel

like we’re nurturing and caring for our innocent bodies

because we love them so much

that we give them whatever they want

whenever they want it

instead of being tricked into believing

we are prisoners that must force ourselves to obey

the rules created by the mind

or else

we are punished

with guilt.

And so we wake up and see

that the rules and the guilt

are no more real

than the dream we had last night

that we can barely remember, but that we SWORE

was actually happening when we were in it.

And so we place a permission slip

inside our hearts

that in beautiful writing says “live.”

And all of a sudden in front of us

a doorway appears.

A beautiful golden doorway,

glowing with the most radiant

soft white light.

It draws us near as we think,

“that was it.”

The permission slip

was the key to Heaven.