Change is inevitable. We all know it. It’s the one thing we can be sure of. Yet when sudden and unexpected change comes we can find ourselves blown and tossed about and feeling lost like a ship all at sea. Sometimes no matter how much we know we get overwhelmed.
We start our day feeling great and then even something good that happens can cause us to go into a spin. Our mind kicks in, we go into overdrive and we enter the story. “But this is so good, just enjoy it all”, we tell ourselves but to no avail. The ego does not want to let go of control. It can be hard for us to adjust our plans and accommodate the new happening or event and we are imprisoned in our expectations of how things were going to be or how things should be. We are under the illusion that we can control what is happening around us when in reality all we need do is notice what’s happening inside of us! But even knowing this may not even be enough to bring a shift if we are really deeply triggered.
Do you listen to your wisdom?
On a head level we may rationalize the day’s journey, but even having this conceptual knowledge and understanding cannot give us true peace. It is great to be aware of our patterns and preferences but this is not enough. As well as seeking first to understand ourselves we need also make friends with Wisdom. Wisdom is a companion of inspiration and though Wisdom may elude us, she is never far away. Yet we seek her in exhausting struggles and endless complications. We play mind games by being caught up in the story of our lives, and in this place of story it’s hard to find stillness. Sometimes it helps to redirect the mind to places of inspiration. Once inspired we can make space again for wisdom.
Connect with your inspiration
So if this is your experience, if you catch yourself spending days or parts of days caught up in a quagmire of control, over (or under) responsibility and even panic, if you feel overwhelmed and can’t regain composure, perhaps it may help to ask this question: what inspires me? By definition we are not inspired when we are in a place of turmoil and so we need something radical to shift us. Learning how to use every day inspiration in a million ways can lead us to “forget” our issues and the complexities we are creating to cause us pain and bring about the shift we seek. Remembering to seek inspiration we regain perspective. We accommodate the change and flux that is causing our flurry and Ah, we can breathe again, secure in the knowledge that we don’t have to do it all, in fact sometimes we find we don’t have to do anything at all!
Pay attention to what inspires you
Herein lies the gift. We are all so unique and we each have our private sources of inspiration. But we can use this as a tool to expand our consciousness. We simply remember to put our attention on what inspires us. We can do this any time and any place. It could be the way the sunshine sparkles on a pane of glass or the reflection of the stars in a midnight sky. It could be the first droplet of morning dew or the memory of a sunset, ocean, forest or desert. It may not lie in nature at all but in a basic and ordinary gesture of kindness held close to the heart. It could be the gentle touch of reassurance in a worrying moment and it could be the giving or receiving of such touch. We can seek to find inspiration or to provide it and each process can immediately connect us with our loving heart center. Making a child happy or lightening someone else’s load can take our focus off our own concerns just long enough to help us see a bigger picture. For that is what inspiration is, it helps us see a bigger view with a wider lens. Paradoxically the biggest view is achieved also in the smallest of things and so the poet William Blake was inspired to write “to see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.”
And now it’s your turn
When we come back to the place of inspiration anything can and does happen. For one, we feel a deep peace and align with Spirit. We are literally transported to our soul place, our place of creativity, the wellspring of our life. And sometimes it is that easy! We leave behind the fog of our intellectual concepts and structures and come to a place of being. All the problems that tie us up in knots slip between our fingers as we embrace the Wisdom that comes to us from the place of inspiration. As Rumi says “Seek the wisdom that will untie your knot. Seek the path that demands your whole being.” Then again we may seek and strive for it and the more we try and force a new experience, the more jammed we can feel. And so we remember to remember to go to a place of inspiration, that memory, that moment, in which love carried us and connected us to the divine.
If you’re looking to connect with your wisdom, I can help. I’m a Melbourne counsellor who helps people connect with their wisdom and inspiration. Contact me on 0403 814 477 or email me to discuss your unique situation and hear how I can help.
