I spent an hour of so talking with my dear friend and teacher Bobcat via a video Skype chat. What a fantastic technology. Anyway, I always have a head full of ideas after speaking with her. Today we discussed death and dying and the role of clergy. I am not going to go into that in this post. What I was reminded of in our talk was just how much our way of seeing things makes all the difference.
Is the glass half-full or half-empty? This is a brilliant question that clearly makes the statement, “the way we see things is a matter of choice”. Certainly our history colours the way we see things in life. However each moment is an opportunity to shift the way we look at the world should we choose to do so.
How do we recognize when it is a good idea to change the way we see things? The simple answer is when we are recognize we are not being led in life by our curiosity, and when we are not finding inspiration in the journey.
I keep writing and rewriting this post, trying to explain what I think about changing perceptions and choice. I think though I will just leave it today with these questions:
1. If you are not being led in life by your curiosity, why is that? What are the consequences for moving through life in this manner?
2. If you are not finding inspiration in life, why is that? We can find inspiration is in everything in life – in the air we breathe, the food we eat, the feel of our morning hot shower on our skin, the sound of birds or the conversations we have with others. It is all around us if we open to it. Inspiration comes from relationship. What is it about you that keeps you from finding relationships that are deep enough to have the flow of inspiration happen between your soul and another?
3. Life is perpetual creativity coming into and out of being, energy moving into form only to come apart again and then move into new forms of creativity. How are you expressing your creativity? How are you using the inspiration that comes into your life? What is holding back your creativity?
4. Where is your sense of wonder? What are the places in your life where you don’t have a sense of wonder? Amazing creativity is all around us. Just look at the amazing thing it is to be able to share and connect using this mind blowing thing called the computer! What causes you to cease seeing the wondering that is existence?
5. What about gratitude? How much have you cultivated this in your life?
I ask these questions to myself as well. This is part of the choice to find inspiration, stopping and taking the time to look at our own life, our own soul, finding those places in our own being that block connection. Inspiration comes from relationship and relationship starts with our own soul. The way we behave, the energy we put into understanding ourselves, the decision to learn from life, these are all choices.
The Animist Druid 