This morning in my meditation, I visited a forest that I went to as a child on a homeschool field trip.
Walking along the path I came to a log that I turned over and it uncovered a bunch of little bugs. To me this symbolized that there is a lot going on under the surface, things we can’t see, all working together in nature.
I walked a bit further down the path and came to an indoor place where someone made this big box with several hand-sized holes, it was a guessing game, to put your hand in and feel something and guess what it was.
I reached in and touched what seemed to be a fuzzy bear. I was afraid. But it was an illusion. There was no bear in there. How often are our fears just an illusion?
Yesterday I learned that our Attention needs to match our Intention. We have the power to direct our attention, not only to see life from various perspectives but to focus on our Intention for the day and create with a childlike attitude of play.
The expectations I had of my parents were heavy, for both me and them. I started having compassion on myself when I knew what I wanted to do but didn’t do it. I realized that my subconscious mind was not aligned with it yet. I saw my parents as being the same way, human. They were and are doing the best they can.
Obligation is heavy. I find that the more I release my parents from my expectations of them, the more I release myself from feeling that I must be everything to my kids. It’s new to me, to reframe that responsibility. That my happiness is my responsibility and other’s happiness is their responsibility.
We can only pay attention to about 7 things at a time, and if coping strategies based on trauma from the past is taking up a lot of that space, then there isn’t room for the ideal things of life.
When I was a kid, I would have nightmares. One night I figured out that when I realized it was a dream, all I had to do was blink really hard, and I would wake up.
Now that I’m an adult, and my life starts to feel overwhelming, I know that meditation (1 conscious breath or more) will provide relief from that overwhelm. That I can go from drowning and struggling, to relaxing and floating.
The feeling like I should be somewhere else, doing something else has been with me most of my life. I know I’m not alone in this. It’s childhood programming.
What’s been helping me lately is the advice from Frozen 2: Just do the next right thing. There are a million things we could do and of course that’s overwhelming. How can we be present if we feel like we should be doing something else?
Mindfulness is focusing on one thing at a time. We can’t do much more than that anyway. I still like to feel like I’m multitasking though. It does make me feel good to know that when I’m doing housework, it’s actually self-care.
How is housework self-care? I’m getting exercise and practicing mindfulness by focusing on the task. It’s also clearing my mind when I do housework and providing better energy for my environment.
Things I used to complain about (like housework) I’m realizing that it is in my power to shift my perspective and see the lesson in it.
Even when I’m feeling depressed, that used to make me feel like everything was hopeless, but now I see it as the confusion before clarity, that there is a huge life lesson right around the corner. Life is just like that, the storm and then the rainbow and sunshine.
Seeing life as the duality between good and bad has been so helpful to me. That acceptance, not only of life, but of myself. For so long I had disowned the parts of myself that I was taught were bad. For example, anger. Anger is to protect our boundaries, it’s a very needed thing, within reason.
I used to think there were some people who had life all figured out and that all their experiences were positive, but that’s ridiculous. We are all human and we all experience the full range of emotions and circumstances.
We are not really in control of anything except our attitude/perspective, to observe our thoughts and focus our attention on what we choose.
There is always a way to take the next step. If we look for the reasons why we can’t do something, of course that’s all we’ll see. But if we look for what we can do, what resources are already available to us, we will see new possibilities that we were blinded to previously.
Abundance is more than money, look at all the things that money can’t buy, and we have more abundance than most millionaires. What we ask for shows up in ways we can’t imagine.
When we appreciate what we have, it’s like installing an app in our brain that is running in the background all day, making us aware of new possibilities and opportunities.
What did you used to imagine or draw as a child? Take a few minutes to do that today. Remember what it was like to lose yourself in creating for fun. Write or draw the way you want to feel, as if you’ve already experienced it.
Until next time, Keep following your heart-song.
Source: Mindful Regeneration