Submit and Obey

The concept of submit and obey comes from my training as a Reiki Master.  The concept is prevalent in many of the eastern spiritual and martial arts teaching traditions.

It doesn't mean that we have to submit our power to someone else.  Instead the concept relates to submitting to a higher force and allowing yourself to be in the universal flow.

It relates to not questioning and being open and awake to the many opportunities for learning that exist outside our own knowledge and ego.

I had a great lesson in submit and obey recently while housesitting.

My charge, a delightful yet very inquisitive little cat, also a well known escape artist, went missing one evening.

It was quite a difficult feat because she was an indoor cat and all the doors were shut!  But in that hard moment of realisation, she was in fact offically missing in action.

Sunniest spot in the house - Sylvie found it and spent most of her time there.

I called and called and checked and I double checked everywhere in the house.  I rattled doors and shook windows wondering where she could have got to.

Considering she was usually in one of four places, asleep on the kitchen window sill, asleep on the bed, asleep on me or ripping around the house like a mad thing, this was most unusual.

She was definitely no where to be found.

This is a horror situation for a house sitter because of course your furry friends are a big responsibility.

Losing one is less than ideal.

Then standing at the kitchen window my blood ran cold.  There was a small gap where the bug screen on the window didn't quite close properly.  Oh dear, had she figured out the one escape route in the house?  The owners had left the window open, so I couldn't figure why they would do that if she could escape.

Plus I really couldn't see how she could have slipped through a gap that small, but now I was going to need to call for support because if she had, she was probably outside now and from past accounts could now be anywhere in the neighbourhood.

So up I went to the office to email the friend around the corner assigned for just this type of disaster.

As I pulled the office chair out from the desk and swung it around to sit down, who did I find on the chair but the cat sound asleep!  In fact she was quite indignant that I'd woken her.

Was she asleep or was she just ignoring me?  Who cares, I'd found her and that was all that was important.

Then something quite unrelated occurred to me.  Several of the windows in the house had little stickers on them that said "don't open - screen broker".  I thought the owners had been very kind in ensuring I wasn't going to get bitten by errant bugs, but what they had been saying was - don't open this window because the cat will be able to get out through the broken screen.

Until this incident that hadn't occurred to me.

Luckily without giving the situation to much thought I had read the signs and submitted and obeyed.  I could just have easily thought, no worries about the bugs, I can handle it and opened them anyway, but I didn't, I obeyed and kept them shut and only opened the windows without signs.  Submit and obey saved my bacon!

The tiny sticker that made all the difference

As a house sitter submit and obey can be our friend on so many levels.  This simple little story is a grand example of how communications can get crossed so easily.

I was just lucky to have such a diligent owner who knew all the tricks of the cat.

As I removed my heart from my mouth, I thanked my now instinctual connection to submit and obey ….. even if I didn't fully understand the full reason for the little sticky note at the time, both the sticky and submit and obey certainly served me well.

The cat just went back to sleep!