By Gail Supplee Tatum, Columnist, The Times
As the season of Spring unfolds, it brings to mind all that appeared dead, but was really only sleeping, to be awakened to a new dawn.
If you ponder on that visualization, you’ll find it to be quite exhilarating to picture all that was still, on the surface, yet all of the activity and growth that was going on below the surface. Nature is amazing!
Life is like the seasons, isn’t it? There are times we need to “go underground”, if you will, in order to let go of things that have been weighing us down and pulling us away from our goals, in order to refocus and clarify our priorities.
How can we awaken what was once dead, and bring back to life what has been lying dormant, under the surface?
I offer you some ways to lift yourself to a higher ground, tap into your spirit, and find your awakening.
- Feel your feelings. This may sound silly but, think about it. We often bury our feelings out of fear which we may not like what our feelings feel like. The only clear way to free our hearts of pain and the quickest way to freedom of our spirit, is to feel our feelings. This will take practice. The best way to tap into your feeling is to stay in the present moment.
- Shed whatever doesn’t feel right or doesn’t elevate your spirit. Visualize a snake shedding his skin. The skin is old and so thick that it has no feeling. There are many times in our life that we have to shed our dead skin because dead skin can’t feel, dead eyes can’t see and dead ears can’t hear. In order to have wholeness, we must be able to feel. Shedding awakens us to self-transformation.
- Be honest with yourself. Once you can look yourself in the mirror and see honesty, then you can be honest with others. It’s about being real and the energy that being real can bring into your life. It’s safe to say that the majority of the human race walk around clouded by fear and not tapping into our full potential. We settle for what we’re given, instead of fighting for what we know we have inside, to give to the world. It’s not a one-time fight, it’s a daily fight. Just as the sun cannot withhold its light, we cannot withhold what feels real. If we ignore that, our light will diminish and the world will miss out.
- Find your inner song. We all have a song inside of us. We are born singing. It’s not a luxury, it’s a necessary way of being in the world. Sometimes the song isn’t pretty. Sometimes it’s the pain of change or change of loss. We have to let that out in order to let light in and to embrace a new song.
Our deepest fear is not that we are weak. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. You’re playing small does not serve the world…As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. – Nelson Mandela
Ask yourself, how am I a shining light? If you don’t know what that means or how to answer that question, it is revealed in knowing yourself. If you don’t know yourself, take the time to discover yourself. In that discovery, in that awakening, you will find your shining light, that you and you alone possess.
