Escape the Ordinary

This mug’s message jumped out at me as something I could write about. My first thought was about how inspirational the mug's message was, but the more I looked at it, the more I realized it was selling me a fantasy. Escapism is about avoiding a life, a job, or a situation. I didn’t want to escape the ordinary; I wanted to know how to take the next step toward a more vibrant life.

Life always happens day in and day out, whether it's ordinary or we feel like escaping. Designing, I told myself, was the opposite of escaping. (It really isn’t. Capturing is the opposite of escaping.) In the context of escaping life, however, I see capturing my life as redesigning it, conjuring happy thoughts of new beginnings and changes I think might help make my life work better.

Sounds good in theory. It also sounds like a lot of work and effort, as first, we need to discover what we actually want. Redesigning our lives takes deep inner work to move us from where we are to where we want to be, or redefining what we want over what we’ll settle for. It takes intuition, thought, prioritizing, timelines, and massive to-do lists, my brain says. That’s the key! I was thinking thoughts, not sensing from the ultimate source of wisdom available to us—the Creator of All That Is, or whatever you call that supreme creative power.

I’ve found out from experience and time that genuine change doesn’t happen unless it begins inside us first. Initial major changes I made were forgiving and learning to love myself, calling back soul fragments, and reconnecting with my soul. I healed anything that seemed like it needed attention, like an unexplained reaction to something or someone, or sudden feelings of dread, fear, shame, rage, or worry.

Today I realize there is always something to heal. When you heal what requires healing, you create more space within and uncover additional layers that need attention. Yes, it's the proverbial onion. More space means more light; more light means more clarity; more clarity means more intuition. And more intuition means your choices become clearer as you reconnect with your soul.

There was another reason this mug caught my attention. Truthfully, escaping sounded fantastic. Ever had a couple of weeks that seemed to double in activity because you decided you needed to add more (for principled reasons, you think) into your already crowded life? Seriously, the bags under my eyes doubled in size. To take a break, I began binge-watching a show on Netflix, and consequently stayed up too late. There went my morning meditation and writing time. Given that my doctor has not yet given me a clean bill of health (autoimmune disease, not cancer), I had to admit that adding that one thing was not a good choice.

Thank goodness I can attempt to understand why I did that, and what I was feeling when I made that choice. I asked myself questions and tested for the root of the issue(s) that needed to be revealed. In the meantime, I felt frantic. My brain spewed thoughts:

I must hurry; it’s been 4 years since I started my book;

the website isn’t working; my email has run out of space;

I don’t know where to start. I need more information.

Ooh, shiny app will help me.

Once I signed up, it wasn’t long before I was in a different mess. The garbage stank, dishes stacked on top of the dishwasher were waiting to be loaded, plants needed watering, laundry piled up, and I could spell “help” in the dust on my dresser.

Thoughts rooted in fear will produce one kind of manifestation on the physical plane. Thoughts rooted in love will produce another. Conversations with God, Book One, 2:04:20, Neale Donald Walsch.

How easy it was to get overloaded, to neglect the genuinely important work in my life like healing, stress management, my life’s purpose, and household cleaning. At least I wasn’t letting myself go down into blackened pits of remorse and self-flagellation. I felt a bit of shame, but it was fleeting as I hunted for the source of what needed healing. Eventually, I found it and recognized an old pattern coming back to haunt me. This pattern was very sneaky, telling me I needed to make a decision and take action right away. That was a freeing realization, and thanks to the healing work I did, the garbage, dishes, plants, laundry, and dusting got taken care of, and I began catching up on my rest.

Back to the mug. Escaping the ordinary was enticing, given how driven I felt, but I understood that this drive stemmed from my own fears of missing an opportunity or having my books published too late or missing some unknown perfect timing. Fear and not measuring up to perfection derailed my ability to make informed and intuitive decisions. I put the mug back on the shelf and left the coffee shop a more aware person. No need to escape.

Anytime fear joins perfection, our decision-making process, as I found out, gets derailed. I needed to look fear in the face, feel it, and let it leave its lessons in my heart before ushering it back to the source of love. Perfection, on the other hand, is an illusion. It is our human need to perform better, be better, which leads to self-condemnation against the spectre of perfection.

"There is a divine purpose behind everything." Accepting our humanness with its fears and illusions and loving it all is what living in the light is. It’s not the presence of fear and illusion that holds us back. We can choose to work through them and find a way of living that doesn’t feel like we need to escape the ordinary. It is shining our light through who we are and what we're facing. As we allow this light of creation to shine within us, we are unlocking our ability to love and unfolding the way forward. That's what ushers us, warts and all, beyond our same old lives.

It has been said that if you don't see God in the profane and the profound you're missing half the story. That is a great truth. God is in the sadness and the laughter in the bitter and the sweet. There is a divine purpose behind everything and therefore a divine presence in everything. Conversations with God, Book One, 2:09:22 Neale Donald Walsch.