Welcome back to SunnyRoomStudio.
It’s Year Five in this sunny space for kindred spirits, and this is my 4th journal entry for our 2014 spiritual journal: Turning Within. To remind: posts will be brief, but introspective. I hope you will keep your own journal. The external world can feel glittery and compelling; we are easily distracted.
Yet, self-awareness, self-discovery, and spiritual realization spring from within.
- ENTRY FOUR: Turning Within
I am fairly certain that most of the world is overwrought about something. It doesn’t take much, does it,
to provoke undue excitement and overreaction?
Watch the news, it’s all too clear. Listen to conversations. Visit blogs that make a point of highlighting controversy.
The roller coaster of life keeps most everyone twitching, flinching, looking, anticipating, regretting, fuming, appeasing, teasing, laughing, crying, running, fidgeting.
We think it’s “normal” until we finally decide to tune it out. Some of it, at least.
Most, if we are vigilant (or lucky).
At last, we see and experience our environment differently. We step off the roller coaster, look up and around, and realize the ride isn’t mandatory. Not in the ways we thought it was.
And, at last, we become the silent observer, the spiritual presence, the one who “knows.” We bring space into our environment; we offer it to others; and we BECOME that sacred space.
Some call this process, this liberating development, spiritual realization … spiritual maturity … spiritual evolution.
- Whatever we call it, living from a spiritual perspective is what life IS about.
Feeling overwrought is a clue–a big clue–that such a perspective has been lost (momentarily, hopefully).
Conversely, when calm and centered and quietly observant, our internal sky is open, vast, compelling.
I love this thought from artist Georgia O’Keeffe:
“I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.”
O’Keeffe sounds centered. Calm. Peaceful. Knowing.
Life is no longer about being stronger, faster, brighter, richer, healthier, smarter, taller, wiser, happier … surface indicators, merely. Life is about the unfolding of spirit … stepping off the roller coaster, taking a look around, and turning within. ~dh
For your journal:
Do you enjoy feeling overwrought? Might there be something more?
Thanks so much for being here. Journal entries post every other Friday morning (next entry: April 4th). Hope you are keeping a journal, too; at the close of this series, we will definitely compare notes.
- If you missed the first earlier posts in this series, click here: Turning Within.
- My next Studio Guest is author Richard Gilbert on April 11th.
- Remember: If you haven’t looked within, you haven’t looked.
