Perspective

It's been a tough couple of weeks.  Despite all the self-cheer leading I've been doing, I was walking around with a cloud over my head.  Talking with a friend the other day, I discovered that she, too, was feeling trapped and hopeless.  This echoed what I was feeling, and it occurred to me that we we're probably both approaching a substantial change in our lives. That was good news.

I thought about snakes who shed their skins to accommodate their new growth.  Perhaps we, too, are engaged in that: a period of shedding old habits to accommodate a fresh, new approach. It's a slow and uncomfortable process, but that idea made me feel more content. So often I forget that life is, essentially, a process of change.  Learning to flow from one phase to another smoothly is what I'd like to do; that and remember that sooner or later all things, even the most stuck and trapped feelings, pass.

It was hard work getting to this point, but the Universe was very kind, leading me step by step until I figured it all out. 

At first, I really wanted to find an inspiring message providing guidence and a ray of sunshine on the street like I had so often in the past.  Nothing showed up.  After several days, I became despondent.  Was the Universe ignoring me? Then it struck me!  Of course not, but in the process of looking for a "sign", I wasn't seeing  the staggering beauty and abundance that is truly always part of our everyday experience. 

Heartened, I started focusing on just that.  I practiced being grateful and appreciative for what I have.  As my appreciation for my life grew, tangible gifts started showing up, like this little heart:

Still, incidents that were disappointing and irritating disrupted my new-found tranquility, and I'd slip back into negativity.  It was frustrating to feel so good one day, then feel bad the next. 

And it was humorous to see how quickly I forgot the big lesson about the nature of life; the inevitability of change. Once again, I felt like I'd be stuck inside this emotional seesaw forever.   

Then I found this:

This little green plane reminded me of vacations!  Clearly I needed one.  There's nothing like a trip to help me get out of any rut I'm in.  Then I thought about what vacations do, and especially what planes do: They help you see your life from a whole new perspective. That's exactly the information I needed, and I knew that I could step back from my life without leaving town. 

Because I realized I was taking it all too seriously. 

Sometimes we do that.  We get so immersed in a certain way of seeing ourselves that we often miss how the myriad shifts of this glorious river of life lead us over the rapids, around a bend, and right into a refreshing new perspective. 

It's easy to appreciate feeling good, but I thought I needed to feel good all the time in order to be more "spiritually evolved".  I learned that isn't so, that I need to appreciated and accept even my bad moods. After all, if I didn't experience my stuck and negative feelings, I wouldn't have been led to this important shift in perspective: that we need not judge any of it, the good, the bad, or even the ugly. 

We never know what will lead us into the light. Sometimes it's our darkness. 

Love, Kristine

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