“In a time of difficulty, maybe [the Universe] has sent you not what you want, but what you need.” —source unknown
Listen. Just listen. Watch. Just watch. Listen to, and watch for, our messages. Our personalized messages. Our Life Messages. It is a tricky business. Sometimes they arrive quietly, almost under the radar, here and gone in an instant. Easy to miss. Other times they arrive with a bang, demanding our attention, unavoidable. But often we nevertheless try to avoid them.
They are the spiritual Messages intended to give us guidance when we are at a divide in our path, and we are looking for a new direction or a new understanding. They point out our best choices for future directions. They help us decipher how things truly work in our world. They help us to understand what we have seen, heard or experienced but not fully understood. They push us beyond the limits of our everyday world into an unlimited world of being.
Every day, we are consumed with Doing. Doing tasks. Tasks initiated by us, assigned to us by others, or inherent in the many roles we have elected to take on. Absorbing words with our ears, images with our eyes, smells with our nose, shape and textures with our hands. Concurrently, we go about the care and maintenance of our body which makes this multi-tasking Doing possible. We long for time and energy to pursue our own Thoughts on all manner of topics to enhance our knowledge and move our life forward. All of these things taken together make for an unrelenting bombardment in continuing assault on our Mind. Each Doing competes for space, recognition; each Doing will likely get less than its desired share; our Mind prioritizes and apportions attention as it sees fit. Judgments of “good” versus “bad” are calculated; decisions are made; actions are taken; new inputs arrive; the Mind reprioritizes. The cycle repeats unendingly.
It is into the midst of this whirling vortex that our spiritual Messages arrive. Against all of this everyday chaos consuming our Mind, it is not a fair fight for commanding attention. Notwithstanding, these are truly the most important claimants for our attention. Yet, more often than not, they are subtle in their presentation. A word, a sentence in a paragraph of conversation with a friend; a flash of an image occupying one small corner of a panorama landscape; a particular smell wafting up in concert with dozens of other odors; the feel and connection of a single touch with another person in a day filled with similar but less-consequential encounters. In an already busy day, an unanticipated event occurs that challenges our assumptions, conflicts with our personal expectations as to what “should be,” perhaps blocks our current path-in-process.
How does one filter, separate, extract these most critical Life Message from the consuming weight, and demands for instant gratification, of our daily chaos? Simply put, we open ourselves to receiving them. We will never recognize our Messages if we do not first believe that such messaging exists. We will not reap the benefits of these messages if we attempt to cherry-pick which messages we accept – i.e. only the “good” and “easy” news that fits our already existing and predetermined plans. (In fact, many Messages are specifically intended to “make the comfortable uncomfortable.”) We will not hear them if we are not open to changing our life in some manner, because our spiritual Messages are inherently about provoking new directions or new ways of thinking. We will not see their importance if we do not pay attention to those moments when we are startled by a particular occurrence in our day. We will not engage as long as we believe that our life is constructed entirely from our own making, with minimal external interference. We will not be moved if we believe that our “coincidences” are just random and unconnected events, curiosities but of no meaningful substance.
In short, we pay attention. We pay reactive attention by our awareness that every moment, every person, every event of our day can be a vehicle for a Message. We pay proactive attention by setting aside time each day to survey the content of our day, to identify any situations that may have slipped by our awareness. In a day filled with Doings, we purposefully create time and space for our Mind to sort through the stories of our day to find the spiritual keys that can unlock the oft-closed doors within which we live. The key that answers the question, “What new thing did I learn today?” The key that tells us, “What am I unnecessarily holding on to?” The key that shows us, “What do I need to see and understand?” The key that shows us, “What bad thing or person in fact helped me to move to my next desirable step?” The key that shows us, “How are the many separate parts and events of my life actually interconnected?”
In a quiet moment, we ask what Life (the Universe) is trying so hard to tell us. Having posed our question, we blot everything else out. We do not force a reply. Rather, we sit back and just listen. Watch the thoughts go by. Withholding judgment. Waiting until that intended core Message we seek comes through to us. We see anew. And then we act.
© 2021 Randy Bell https://OurSpiritualWay.blogspot.com
