3 Pearls to Help You Recover Your Smile
Joy is closer than you think, but you may need a new day to reach it
I could write of the tears and the turmoil of yesterday.
But, honestly, why would I?
I was going to start this blog there. You know, starting with the bleak, to bridge to the bonny…
And then I thought, no.
Regroup.
I know the negatives compel us. We love a good crisis to suck us right in. That’s part of our problem perhaps…
We‘re hard-wired to focus on pain, whilst joy dances on all around us.
Of yesterday, I could say, “I had an awful day. Couldn’t lift myself out of the mire of grief for more than a handful of minutes at best.”
Bottom-bouncing, as a friend put it, nicely.
She offered soothing — “Perhaps you needed to hit the bottom,” she said “to return to the surface of the sea?”
But I’ve been bouncing off this bleak-thoughted, sea-bed bottom since the day that Michael died. With each bounce upwards, each fresh gasp of relief, comes another wave, plunging me under.
Like I said, I could start my blog there. But I’d rather start with the pearls…
Pearl One — Contrast
Actually, of yesterday, I can honestly say, ‘I had a great Step 1 day.’
This — It’s just a Step 1 kind of day — thought occurred to me in the middle of yesterday afternoon. This pearl from Abraham* brought relief.
Step 1 is a term from Abraham’s teachings. They describe the cycle of creation:
- Step 1 — contrast causes us to ask (it often sucks),
- Step 2 — the universe answers (tricky — our job is to trust),
- Step 3 — we relax into receiving mode (we train ourselves to expect answers and desires to come, in their own, perfect time…)
This cycle can challenge the crap out of us.
When we don’t know how or when our asking might be answered, our emotions can torment us.
Like many of you, I imagine, I make misery worse by resisting it.
I don’t want to feel bad and when I do, my first response (still!) is to freak out about it.
Friends and therapists encourage me to cry. I know it’s healthy but Jeez Louise… enough with the tears already!
When they say, “Good! You’re letting it out,” I know they’re right, they’re saying what I’d say to them.
Still, I want to say back:
“You try crying this bloody much. Tell me how good it feels to you then!”
I admit it. I judge a day without tears as a ‘good’ one.
I say the likes of,
“I was doing really well until…”
As if a teary day is a failed day. A day wasted. A day gone awry.
Yesterday, with the first pearl of wisdom received, I released my tear-rated judgment…
It felt so much better simply to say,
“I’m in the contrast part of creation, there is nothing going horribly wrong here.”
It didn’t take the tears away. But it gave me relief in the shedding of them.
Pearl Two — Momentum
Then I remembered a second Abraham pearl.
Momentum will have its way with us. We can’t jump out of a plane, sans parachute and meditate our way back to safety.
My day was going to be a teary one. No matter how often I brought myself back to calm waters, the wash from bleak thoughts was too active.
The good news is: each day resets itself anew.
Once sleep comes, I’m free. Resistance is released. Completely.
The tricky part is: I’ve got to get ahead of the following day.
It doesn’t work to say: Today was crap. I’ll have a better day tomorrow.
Which is where pearl number one comes back into play.
Finding a stance that values the day, because of the tears not in spite of them — that’s magic in the making.
To be able to say, in all honesty, “Today has been a really great, Step 1 day,” is life-changing.
Is it authentic? Absolutely.
Accepting? Hell yes.
Allowing the good stuff to follow in its wake? Too bloody right!
You see, the other side of Step 1 is the hidden marvel here. When focused on what I don’t want — the loss of what feels like my everything — the pain of that focus tells me the magnitude of the creation I do want in its place.
Abraham says — and I choose to believe it — that when we ask, it is given, every time, without fail, come what may. (Jesus said it first, of course…)
I don’t need to fuss about the how or the when. Simply to know that my desire’s creation is underway. It’s happening. It’s a done deal. Q.E.D.
Today, I may dwell in the freezing shadow of my desire. Tomorrow I may step into the first faint rays of its light.
But how to do that when reality is so, so far from my desire? And with no logical hope of realisation?
Pearl Three — Imagining
I hear it. A quiet, calm voice. A thought really. It says, “Imagine.”
How had I forgotten this pearl so completely? Imagining had proved its worth repeatedly in my husband’s dying days. Imagining sounds so Pollyanna, so Disney-go-lightly, I know.
There’s so much more to it than that.
“When you imagine, you begin to create and when you begin to create, you realise that you can create a world that you prefer to live in, rather than a world that you’re suffering in.” — Ben Okri
In truth, imagining brought me through the most harrowing moments of my life. Of Michael’s death.
“Imagination is the eye of the soul.” — Joseph Joubert
The eye of the soul.
Wow.
If that were true, wouldn’t we be wise to do far more imagining? What a beautiful concept!
Imagination was all but extinguished for me as a child by fixed mindset training and the impossibility of improvement for parents in chronic decline.
Or so I thought.
The ability to imagine seemed to elude me for my first five decades on the planet. It was nigh-on impossible to imagine even having desires, so convinced was I that I couldn’t fulfil them.
Ridiculous, I know, a coach who can’t imagine a goal!
Not great at visualising, useless at meditating, I had a yen for the aesthetic but no means to express it. No imagination. No sense of efficacy. No drive.
That’s how it felt.
Then Michael’s dying happened.
Boy did that sharpen my focus.
Imagination came to the fore. I didn’t expect it. Joubert explains it.
When the physical eye can’t bear its burden, the soul’s eye brings sweet relief.
Imagining my beloved healthy, happy. That took me through the worst points of contrasting reality last year.
In the eye of my soul, we walked by the sea. Danced. Held hands. Smiled softly. Whispered sweet soothings like always.
That was then.
Yesterday, a calm voice, a thought in my head, brought me back to this pearl of great price.
“Imagine.”
Missing Michael? Imagine him.
Today, with the reset of sleep and a small turn of the soul-craft’s rudder just before it, I am up for imagining once more.
I can imagine my sweetheart. He’s standing between me and the sea. Open arms, open heart, enfolding.
I understand anew, the words from our wedding day sonnet:
“Love is not love
which alters when it alteration finds
or bends with the remover, to remove.”
— Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
I’d not thought of the remover being death.
I’d not imagined my task being to bend not with the refraction of mortality, but to be that
“… ever fixèd mark
that looks on tempests, but is never shaken.”
And what of life’s meaning?
What of hope for the future?
Who speaks more credibly to this than Edith Eger?
“Our painful experiences aren’t a liability — they’re a gift. They give us perspective and meaning, an opportunity to find our unique purpose and our strength.”
“Hope is the boldest act of imagination I know.”
I can imagine life holding meaning, long before my eyes paint purpose for me. My soul-shanga** grows daily with pearls of great price.
I can grow hope actively, imagining it first in my inner world of love.
All the while appreciating my outer reality — the cradling by my loved ones — who bring me joy in endless stream.
Picnics in the carpark in the tipping-down rain; strolls through the ukulele bushes (fodder for another blog!); seeds for the planting arriving by post and sweet puppy sleepovers…
I am cocooned in love, by the most beautiful souls alive. I know it.
“The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper and re-imagines the world.” — Malcolm Gladwell
I have an unusually blank life canvas right now.
‘Mahaba’*** to the lovely ones who encourage me to paint.
- *Abraham — see www.abraham-hicks.com
- **Shanga (shah-nga) — Swahili for ‘string of beautiful beads’
- *** Mahaba (mah-ha-bah) — Swahili for ‘overflowing with love’