We have been in ‘times like these’ for a while now, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any lighter. Actions and circumstances are feeling heavier and heavier. No one said it would be easy. No one said waking up and seeing beauty, feeling love and leaning into necessary and inherent connections would be the first thing that popped into our sight. In fact, we were probably told it would be hard. That life is tough. And it is. We all know it is. We feel it every damn day. Some days more.
On days when devastation seems insurmountable, we feel it deeply. We are all connected and we’re in this together. We feel their pain as ours. We feel their loss. We are angry, confused, and scared. We feel helpless and insignificant. We want another world, but we keep seeing this one of brutal heavy hurting. And, unfortunately, we have to feel it. There is no way around, only through. Step by step. Feeling by feeling.
But one thing we forget all too often as humans walking this planet, is that we have the unique ability to seek out and pull into creation very beautiful and meaningful experiences. From our very own hearts and heads. We have the ability to feel our inside world so deeply and compellingly that we desire that world on the outside, too. Trouble is, we feel small. We feel like the little things don’t make a difference. But they do. And we actually have a choice each and every day. It’s still not easy, at least at first. Every time we bring in something new to our world, it takes time and attention to make it a pattern and habit and to become the default way of being in the world.
Each time we open our eyes we have a moment where we can experience the past once again by letting the looped default feelings and thoughts running through our system become our life. These feelings and thoughts from a thousand yesterdays are so familiar, like the marked up paint on our walls, that we don’t even notice them. They are our familiar landscape and we walk into them as half awake as we walk into our bathroom in the morning.
What we need is a moment of pause. It takes only a moment to stop autopilot and to pause instant reaction. It requires a deep breath and it requires awareness. It the beginning it may take a few moments and many deep breaths. In this pause, we have an opportunity to move underneath our everyday world and come into proximity with our true operating system. Especially when those around us are hurting. When we’re hurting, this is a much, much harder place to get to. This is why it’s important to create this place, for both ourselves and for others. As we create this spaces of connection and love, we strengthen this resonant vibrational melody in the world at large. When these waves of love and connection are strengthened, it becomes easier to feel (and hear) them through the surrounding noise and chaos on our planet. When we strengthen the current of connection and love, it is able to flow deeper and wider out into the emotional weather that flows around the world.
Deep inside of us, our true operating system is quietly humming along. At some point we lost our strong connection to it. But it is there, I promise you, just as bright and full of life as the day you were born. It has never left you. And when you come closer to this place, where beauty, love and connection reside, this is where magic is created.
This deeper place always always always has a lightness to it. This place is where your life is imbued with meaning. This essence has a quality to it that is utterly unique to you. You may experience it as the youngest, brightest you that you are able to remember. It is the place in you that holds wonder and possibility always—not sometimes, when things actually work out well—but always, even when devastation crashes in.
In the beginning, just coming close to this place changes how you enter your day. Spaces widen and opportunities seem more possible. Here, potentials and inspiration have room to enter your world. When you pause and move inside, you create an opening in your loops of everydayness. Here, something new can arise and take up space. It is as if the clouds part and a ray of light can enter your personal atmosphere.
When we keep going on autopilot, our world is like Teflon, we have this tensional bubble of What Is that doesn’t let anything new enter because we already know how everything is going to work out. Or we turn to fear. So we spin our loops and re-create the same world every single damn day. Like groundhog day. Try adding something new and light to an already fast spinning device—a turntable or a merry-go-round (I know, I’m dating myself here.) It will not stay on; it will be thrown off by the force of motion already in action. But if you slow things down even a little, something new can emerge and be added without being rejected. And when you give it the weight of your attention, it begins to stay.
In times like these, we are the change we wish to see in the world. We are the ones we are waiting for. We are the ones that will bring this world of love, beauty and connection into reality. It starts at home, every time you open your eyes. Then we can share this with the world at large—bringing our love, beauty and connection from our shadows into the light of fullness where it belongs.