Spiritual Restoration
During one of those hot and humid spells last summer, my 36-year-old son shared about an evening trip he and his significant other had taken to the beach.
“It was beautiful, Mom”, he said. “The tide must have been out because we walked a long way into the water, and it was still only up to our knees. As we looked around, it felt as if we were the only ones in the world, standing in the middle of the ocean with the full moon shinning down on us.”
“Wow,” I replied. “That sounds lovely.” Yet, at the same time, my head was screaming, “But sharks! What about sharks?! DID YOU EVEN LOOK AROUND FOR SHARKS!?”
Fortunately, I kept those thoughts to myself. Yet, in that moment, I knew -- I had slid over to the dark side, the dark side of awfulizing and imagining worse case scenarios. It’s easy to understand how I got here. And I don’t have to go into detail because we have all felt the negative effects of real-life events for quite some time now. From conversations I have had with both clients and friends, I know that many of us have little by little slid into this place of pessimistic anticipation, hypervigilant for “sharks.”
I am reminded of a story I often tell of two women walking down a street. Suddenly, they fall into a big hole. The first woman just kind of lays there dazed, feeling paralyzed and overwhelmed, wondering, “how did I fall into this?” The other one, however, has already jumped to her feet thinking, “How do I get out of here?”
Well, we know how we got in here, but we often don’t quite know how to get out! How do any of us get out of what may be an old and familiar tendency, or a new propensity for negative thinking, feeling, and projection? For me, the answer is all about “spiritual restoration.” I must restore and nurture my spiritual consciousness which has, admittedly, been pushed to the back burner on more than one occasion during these times of turmoil and uncertainty.
The place to begin, as reinforced in Eight Choices When Life Changes, is in the morning. “The way in which we begin our day will determine how well or not we will live it.”
So how are we beginning our day? If our first action involves the often-negative distraction of TV, news, computer, or cellphone, we are already on a downward slide. A much better choice would be to start our day by inviting and allowing the power and presence of some Higher Power into our lives. Our personal conception of what this might be is not important. What matters is that we understand there is some Universal Power/Mystery that is greater than we are.
Next, we could create a “mantra” for the day, something we can focus on and repeat when negativity or fear-based thoughts threaten to ruin our mood and outlook. When they arise, rather than allow them to fester and grow, we can shift our thinking onto a positive thought such as… “All is well.” “I trust and rely on the Universal Power.” “Today is a good day to be alive.” “I rejoice in my ability to _________.” “I am delighted to_________.”
We can even go further by writing our mantra down and placing it on our refrigerator or carrying it in our pocket. Whenever we sense the negative doom and gloom beginning, we can immediately shift to our positive mantra, thus breaking the cycle of negative thinking. We can lighten up and begin to wear the world a little bit looser. By placing our attention on our mantra, and work on keeping it there, we need not focus on the “sharks” but instead look upward and inward as we move into spiritual restoration.