Paying
Attention
“...By
transcendental meditation
I
go there each night
But
I always come back to myself
Long
before daylight...”
George
Strait (“All My Ex's Live in Texas”)
So,
I know that “All My Ex's Live in Texas” is not a hymn, but that's
what I woke up with this morning. It was running in my head when I
turned on the laptop and checked-in with Facebook. What do you know!
One of my ex's had posted pictures on my timeline of flowers in his
Myrtle Beach yard! Nice photos, nice man. I'm glad to know he's right
where he needs to be and happy.
You
may be wondering what any of that has to do with spirituality. Well,
in my world view, paying attention to what's running in your head is
part of consciousness. Whether it's a dream, on-going lines of music,
worrisome repetitive thinking, or images of things past, what goes on
in our heads, seemingly independent of our will, is important to
notice. It often contains information that is trying to make its way
to the conscious level, and finding creative ways to get there.
We
may be going through our day, doing whatever we do, with one verse of
a song playing in our heads. We can choose to see that as pathological,
saying it's the result of anxiety or dying neurons, or we can pay
attention to the song lyrics, and wonder, “Why this song?” We
can ponder its message and see where it takes us. We can do the same
thing with a dream. What is the dream showing me—what associations
do I have with the various images? When we have an “out of the
blue” memory of some past situation, person, place, we can ask
ourselves, “Where did that come from?” and allow ourselves to
delve a little into the why and wherefore of it. These are ways of
making conscious what is unconscious; ways of listening within to
what may be that “still small voice” that tries to lead us where
we need to go.
All
my ex's don't live in Texas. Never the less, I send them love today,
and appreciation for the role they played in my life. We are who we
are because of all the parts of us revealed by other people. They are
our mirrors and our teachers.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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