Dance Into The Light
How To Stop Chasing Your Tail
Dance Into The Light
"Come dance with me
Come on and dance into the light
Everybody dance into the light
There'll be no more hiding in shadows of fear
There'll be no more chains to hold you
The future is yours - you hold the key
And there are no walls with freedom"
Why We End Up Chasing Our Tails
At time of writing as the Covid lockdown restrictions are gradually easing many of us are feeling anxious.
Adopting a mindful approach is
helpful in dealing with these uncertainties.
I can say from personal experience that the mindful approach to life is
an effective way of becoming aware of our habitual thought patterns and
emotional states and weakening their hold on us to the point that we no
longer self identify with these thoughts and states.
As the
mindfulness teachers and leading practitioners will tell you, making
peace with the present moment, as the Buddha put it “the suchness” of
life, and accepting what is, is the gateway to allowing this awareness to develop.
Creating Hell On Earth
However
I have to also say that in my experience I have found that all too
often we are too unconscious and too self-identified with these unconscious states to be
able to make much if any progress. As Eckhart Tolle says:
This happens when we are too
subsumed within our underlying and deeply embedded negative energetic
states.
Living in Samsara
We live in an energetic universe and, contrary to what we are brought up to believe, it is not just our actions that generate the results we experience in life it is also our energetic states.
Many
of us are from a western influenced background and so are culturally
conditioned to an action orientation, and thus we automatically place a
great value on activity.
The effect of social media
A
current example of this is how we are influenced by social media which
tricks you into thinking that unless you are running three businesses,
attending celebrity functions, have learned a new language and a
thousand fun hobbies that you are not doing well enough...
Given
that so many of our actions are based on underlying energetic - or
dominant emotional - states of fear, doubt, worry or other ego based
states of greed, pride and other forms of self-centredness, it is hardly
surprising that we do not experience the joy, fulfilment and inner
peace that we mistakenly believe these things will deliver.
We go unconscious...
To counter our dissatisfactions and misery we initially go unconscious and over-indulge in all the usual distractions...
...then the me-time focus
Then
we resurface and embark on yet more activity but this time with a
me-time focus such as various forms of relaxation, health driven
pursuits and of course the ubiquitous personal development.
We
recharge our batteries and get back on track only to revert to type with
our usual activities of miss-creation driven by underlying negative
energetic states.
The result of all this is that we end up
repeating the cycle and "chasing our tails" to make up for the impacts
of the unintentional miss-creations of our negative energy.
Buddhists refer to this state as samsara, that is to say, the endless cycle of suffering and dissatisfaction.
Dance Into The Light - And Grace Will Lead Us Home
A mindfulness based approach will, over time, enable us to break this cycle of chasing our tails.
Our higher self,
the "God part" of us, the higher power - call it whatever you want - I
call it The Energy Of Life - has the power to unleash a transformation
that can not only stop us chasing our tails but that can change us in
ways that we can barely imagine.
I am talking about a spiritual
rebirth, a new life and sense of purpose, and an identity that retains
the best of us and drops the dross and that enables us to stay aligned
to The Energy Of Life.
But in order for this to happen we have to ask for it!
This
article, this website and every personal expression of spiritual
experience that I offer whilst not specifically Christian nor Buddhist
nor from any other faith tradition nevertheless draws heavily on these
expressions wherever I have found them to point to a universal truth.
In
this context, the hymn and popular song "Amazing Grace" is a powerful
message and metaphor of spiritual healing, forgiveness and the change
and transformation that is possible regardless of the depths of the
personal hell in which we have sunk and in which we are stuck.
Through many dangers, toils and snares
We have already come.
T'was grace that brought us safe thus far
And grace will lead us home.
This
is a Christian song about a Christian expression of spiritual
awakening, regeneration and transformation. The grace that is referred
to is the grace of God or as we refer to it in this series of articles
The Energy Of Life.
I
want to suggest to you that the most powerful and direct route to
changing your dominant energetic state is by becoming humble, and
reaching out to your higher power/higher self/God/The Energy Of Life and
asking for spiritual help.
Let's Call This A Prayer
Don't get hung up on the 'God dilemma'. Don't put a label on it. As Aldous Huxley put it: "The finding of God is a coming to one’s self."
Drop
your ego, stop thinking, sit down somewhere quiet, better still kneel
down and say - and feel it - as you say it - and mean it:
"Please help me.
I can not control my thoughts and feelings I need your help.
Please fill me with your spirit of grace and the feeling of your peace.
Please help me to live a life filled with positive energy.
Please show me what to do and lead my in your path.
Thank you."
Further Reading:
The Energy Of Life
How To Live In A Participatory Universe
The Power Of Gratitude
The Loving Father
A Portrait Of A Person Connected To The Field Of Intention
I want to
close with a powerful and high energy song from Phil Collins and that I
feel is especially appropriate to the theme of this piece and the dark
times that we are all experiencing and will emerge from:
Next Article: Change Your Language To Change How You Feel Return: to: Walking The Talk Or to: What Is Spirituality?Dance Into The Light - Phil Collins
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