In today’s world we are rushing around trying to make ends meet, trying to work out who we are and what we should or should not be doing. Who we should be with and how we can make the best of our lives. We aim for a good job, a home, health, good lives for our children and family and great relationships. All considerable goals and worthy ones too. Yet I believe we are looking for something more. Those things are the surface layer if you like which mask our true desire.
Life throws challenge our way every day. My family are riding this challenge bus as I write this. My husband was diagnosed with cancer in August and we have had a drive through many different emotions and states of being since then. He has had a successful operation and is now in the process of preventative chemotherapy, so a positive prognosis. Now, as many of my articles have mentioned before, my belief is that there is always something to be gained through challenge.
I believe to find this gain, even a small win, you must look at your life through states of being. So being happy, sad, elated, frustrated, these states of being can change, and you can change them. Maybe then what we are really striving for in our daily lives and our goals is a particular state of being. That place where we feel happy no matter what happens to us. We are looking for FREEDOM…that state of being that gives us unlimited awareness and ability to be ourselves even when we are following unexpected routes in life.
This freedom can come in many forms because we are all individual, unique beings but for me as a spiritual person it underpins the whole of what can be deemed as spiritual. For we are magnificent beings in a physical world. If we embrace the freedom of connecting to our true self, we would openly realise that the struggles in life are part of a bigger pattern.
I want to be able to explain this without simplifying the challenges of daily life because they are real and on one level can be devastating. That said, we cannot connect with true self and that elusive freedom without us sometimes being given a kick, to look at our lives with a broader brush, yet also with a more focused eye on the simple truths of our lives.
I have had a kick, so has my husband and although I have coached many on spiritual outlook and reaching goals and seeing an alternative plan, here I am looking very hard at my own state of being.
Whilst we have been rearranging our lives around hospital appointments, recovery and listing all the things we can’t do…yet. I have found a new perspective, well been reminded of one that I found long ago. It has released me from what I am meant to do, or what I think I ought to be doing and instead reminded me that I am responsible for my state of being, regardless of outside events. Me, I am the only person that can change what I want to feel and express at any given time.
Already a positive person (learned from challenges earlier in my life) I worked on what I was thinking, feeling, creating. I can now feel extremely happy even going along to cancer appointments with my husband. He too is taking a positive approach and also allowing himself to feel low, but he is aware enough to not stay there. He is practising the freedom of mind power and not attaching to negative energy around his situation. It’s a mindset first until you can clutch the feeling you really want.
I am not suggesting for one moment that we diminish what people are going through. However, I am saying there is a way through it and when you come through something realising it to its full then you have grown. Going through something with a positive attitude and positive state of being is not the same as going around it by just thinking a positive thought – that is only part of the process. You must feel it, be it.
I completely understand the next question “Why can’t we grow without all these terrible disruptions in our lives?” The answer to that is we can! If we are aware of how our mind energy works. Sometimes we can avoid these situations, some are of our own making with our state of being creating them through our own energy scenarios in our lives. Others, usually the more serious issues come along to help us understand more about ourselves and appreciate just who we are and to help us find that special part of us that can allow us to be free and fly as our greatest self. The kick we needed to be who we are fully.
Positivity is about attitude THROUGH the difficult times not avoidance of the negative, when we speak of replacing a negative thought with a positive one, it isn’t about denial or avoidance it is about FEELING what is good in your life at the same time as going through the challenge.
It is mastering the mind and that creates a state of being. That allows a freedom to be the spiritual being you are, creating growth, creating exciting patterns in your life no matter what. Learning about your own energy and being responsible for that.
There are many methods to start connecting to this idea, meditation, yoga, healing modalities whichever you find that gets you in a state of being that is better, raised up. The key is to pay attention to the feeling the activity gives you and then use that as a guideline to recreate that feeling when it is needed. Then dear friends begin a deeper journey to freedom, deem that feeling as part of you, see that you can create this feeling and more whenever you like, discard the idea you are powerless and have no control over what life throws at you.
I have found a comfort in this process and once you can raise yourself to a state of being which brings you peace and even joy in the darker times then you have the freedom to know and feel the magnificence of you and how blessed you are that you can do this for yourself. Then the focus is shifted away from the challenge to the wonderful opportunity it gives you to fly free within that precious moment.
A fantasy? Well maybe that’s what freedom is all about, reality versus fantasy. For me, reality is embedded in the deep power we have within us to change that reality from moment to moment. What a freedom that is!!
More to Life Elder
rticle by More to Life Elder – Patricia McDowall
Article published in More to Life – Edition 69
