Friday, March 10, 2017

It's Your Lens

Change the Focus

My self-healing lies in praying for those who have harmed me...We can always choose to perceive things differently. You can focus on what's wrong in your life, or you can focus on what's right.”
Marianne Williamson

We were talking in the Spirituality Group about why it is that we humans tend to focus on the negative, and simply overlook the positive. One man said he thought it might be a hold-over from our primitive cave days—when we had to be ever wary of all the things that might want to eat us. In other words, an over-developed sympathetic nervous system that's always on alert. It's also a matter of training. When you think about it, all our drama, whether in books, television, theater or films, requires a driver; an action that drives the plot and story line. Usually that driver is an act of sabotage, murder, or some version of imminent or past dastardly action. Think Shakespeare, here. In many of his plays, almost everyone in the cast is dead by the end. We seems inherently more interested in the possibility of diabolical outcomes than we are in happy endings. We've come to see the constant gut-wrenching turmoil as normal.

So when it's suggested that our personal healing lies in forgiveness, in praying for the one(s) who harmed us, it simply goes against the grain. We want resolution, and that resolution involves reciprocity of suffering. We call it closure, but it rarely closes anything. In considering all of this, it's important to remember that our feelings belong to us—are generated by us, from within us. We own those feelings, so we are the only one's who can tinker with them. We can choose to see negative actions as paramount, or we can decide to balance them with all that is positive in our lives. It's a matter of changing focus, just as we do when we look at something in the distance, and then, look at something close up. Our focus also belongs to us. It is neither the purview of anyone else, nor is it dependent upon our circumstances. Every day, we choose. Moment-to-moment, we choose. Do we want to heal? If so, perception is everything.

                                                          In the Spirit,

                                                             Jane

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