The Light Within

In this blog, I recap about how I have begun to open my mind to seeing the world and everyone around me in a new light. I can bring my spirituality into the world, and experience the power of God within everyone and every-day life. I can allow myself to be a unique instrument of God and light by being my authentic self.

Lately my whole concept of reality has been shifting to something spectacular as I’ve been opening my mind to new beliefs, about myself and the universe. I try to keep track of some of the work I put in as well as realizations that occur along the way so I can share them, as much as it is possible by description. A lot of spiritual experiences are difficult to describe verbally, as I’m sure we can all relate, there’s more to our human experience than what we think and feel, it is beyond description. Similar to when we try to share a funny event with others, we often end up saying, “you just had to be there” to really understand it. I’m learning that this is ok, we are meant to share with others what we are able to, and the rest is unique to us, as it is meant just for us. Maybe the rest is open to interpretation in order to fit the other person’s specific needs and lessons, they hear exactly what they are meant to hear, and however they receive it. We can trust in the messages we receive. As many believe, Jesus can come to us through anyone and in unexpected ways, and we can extend this to God in general or for any religion. The more I opened myself to spiritual experiences in my everyday life, believing in the God in every one of us and our experiences, the more I could pick up on messages and spiritual lessons in many of my conversations and interactions, that I was meant to hear.

In psychology, we look at how one single event can be perceived differently by every person who witnessed or participated in it, and it is interesting breaking down what leads to our different perceptions and experiences. When we experience our world, the input from our surroundings comes in through our senses. So much information comes in for processing that it gets filtered to amplify that which is specifically important to us, so we see and process that which has meaning for us, which can vary person to person. This sensory information, mixed with everything we have already learned about the world, about specific people, along with beliefs, judgements, our world view, our expectations…altogether gets processed in our minds to create our own unique perception of the experience. Also taking into account our emotional state at the time, and sometimes emotional states from similar past situations (for example, fear, depending on our world view, how safe the world or this particular situation seems based on our past learned experiences, especially for those who experienced trauma) and so forth. We incorporate our own imagination and creativity when we analyze and interpret the experiences to find meaning. For many including myself, our spiritual beliefs and personal philosophy play into how we perceive and explain our world, just as much as our world view.

Becoming aware of what drives my unique experiences helped me learn where I could open myself up to allowing something different come through, it was just a start to seeing and to processing my world in new ways. With self-awareness I could see what had been limiting my perceptions and experiences… what kept me stuck seeing and experiencing the same things the same ways, or with the same reactions that I wanted, and thus what I could change. This is especially useful when trying to alter or expand one’s world view, to shift away from negativity and into the light. We don’t need to work on changing ourselves, we can love and accept who we are, and we can work on loving and accepting others and the world around us as we begin to see it in new ways.

In previous blogs, I wrote about exploring how my past experiences and perceptions shape my identity and world view. I was working to identify and gain awareness of how I process and perceive the world, and myself, and try to change these perceptions to gain new insight and a new perception of reality that gave me a better life experience. This did work to an extent, as it helped me sort through my past where I needed to learn and let go, find forgiveness, as well as understand myself better with more compassion. It also helped me find meaning and purpose as I brought my spiritual beliefs into the picture, this helped me learn and grow from my past. One major change I made for myself was to step away from the separation between God and spirituality from the physical world I live in. In accordance with my spiritual beliefs, and in certain Divine Laws (such as the Divine Law of Oneness) everything and everyone is Divine, it is all God, we are all connected by one source of creation, we all share one collective consciousness (which is one with God or can be seen as God consciousness). This being the case, I can bring this idea of “Heaven to Earth,” I can see and experience everything in my waking life as a spiritual experience, in every moment. We don’t have to pray or connect to something that is separate or distant from ourselves here on Earth, it’s all right here in front of us, and within us. This opened me up to experiencing things in my physical life that beforehand I did not think possible, it is something we can all do for ourselves, and I will touch more on later.

The spiritual experiences I have been receiving by being open and connected to God have helped me build a much more beautiful world view than I had in the past, it confirmed the Divine unconditional love of God and the universe and within each one of us. Not only did I need the power of mind and belief in order to manifest for myself, but also the power of faith and God, as I have witnessed it work in miraculous ways. The true intention of the universe is Divine and that of love, including our experiences with one another. We all have had this working in our lives and can choose to belief in it, not as separate or distant but a part of us and our physical experience. For one, I let go of the judgements or ideas that I had about people, whatever I experienced with them was just part of my perception and personal opinion and not the entire truth. Like I mentioned earlier, what we are perceiving in an experience is unique to us, and differs my person, therefore how can we ever know the entire truth? There is a huge part of our experience together that is just an outward expression…it’s how we conform, or to work with whatever is happening around us, and isn’t the entire truth to who we really are. Our inner experience, when we relax and take note of it, is something beyond words, and it becomes limited when trying to verbally describe it. We must be open and realize there is more than we are able to see and share with one another. Keeping true to my own unique perspective and the inner truth to who I am, I am allowing myself to be authentic, an individual. Instead of trying to conform to others and what I had previously noted, I am working on relaxing and allowing myself to see all people in new ways, while remembering this Divine intent. Likewise, I had to let go of all the opinions and judgments about myself that I had learned or was told from others, because they can never know the entire truth of my being or my unique experience within. To be open-minded and willing to see more than what we previously assumed, from each other and the world, we can receive more from reality. We can let it be something loving, spiritual, or whatever it is that you choose, if you allow it.

To be my authentic self, I also had to give up the effort to conform to others and that which happened around me. I let go of trying to control the outcome of any situation or interaction. In other words, I had to let go and let God, and amazingly it worked. In the past, I had always felt like I had to uphold everyone, to keep the peace, try to be understanding and compassionate by being true to what others were portraying, and whatever was going on with them. I tended to conform to others, and stayed in mutuality, within whatever their world view was. I am now finding that I can be just as helpful by staying in my own truth and confidence in my own capabilities and beliefs, I can bring something unique to the experience or interaction. I can believe in myself and by having faith, I can stay in the moment without stress or worry, I can relax to enjoy myself and others.