I’ve noticed that as soon as I stop focusing on a sufficiently complex activity to keep my mind occupied, I automatically seek out the most troubling problems in my current reality and refocus on them. I will transition from pleasant absorption in a book or an engaging conversation to the misery of how awful things are in a nanosecond.
This doesn’t seem like a very uplifting way to live. Downright depressing, in fact.
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I had a bell-ringing demonstration of this last night. I finished reading Aunt Dimity and the Summer King, happily submerged in a sweet and balanced world that doesn’t even require a fictional murder to achieve its “cozy mystery” status.
As I closed the book and set it aside, my mind was momentarily blank. But only for a moment. Within seconds I was seeking my current set of problems: there’s something I’m supposed to be worried about. What was it again?
Oh yes, the cats have fleas and the world is going to hell in a hand-basket…and there I am, back in the mental foxhole of All That’s Wrong With the World.
Surely I can recapture positivity. An incantation I can recite, a candle I can light, an affirmation steeped in focused intention. And yet, as Marilyn Raffaele’s Arcturian Group messages often note, spiritual (or psychological) practices that have long worked well for us may no longer do so. Our favorite tools have dulled not through lack of care, but the planned obsolescence of the dawning New Age.
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Natalie Gianelli’s newsletter with a message from Dr. Peebles arrives by email as I’m working on this article. He notes:
What is occurring is transmutation—the reinvention of yourself…This is a brand new time of reinvention. This is not to be feared, but celebrated.
It is not possible for you to continue to do the same things you’ve done with the same mindset, hoping to get the same results you wanted 5, 10 or 15 years ago.
Perhaps it’s all right to let the tried and true panaceas fade into obscurity. The things that worked just last year now feel awkward. It’s hard to remember what to “do.” Maybe because this time now is about being, not doing. Allowing, not grasping.
This rings true on some distant inner gong. An imperfect gong with a crack. Perhaps the crack that lets the light in is the deceptively simple non-tool of allowance.
Light knows where it is welcomed and invited. Let us let the light in.