Despite life’s inherent challenges, gifts await us around every corner if we remember to pay attention to where we look.
Throughout this past year, I felt the repeated prompt to keep focusing on the good report. To not let what is negative have the upper hand. This has been, and will most likely continue to be, a very daily practice, and one I must return to again and again. Where your mind dwells, so the heart is.
When we are overwhelmed by the state of the world, or feeling at the end of our rope, what we allow our minds to dwell on helps us shift from a sense of despair to one of hope.
The other week, I took a walk through the botanic gardens on the outskirts of town. We are in a high desert climate in San Miguel, and on my walk I kept noticing new cacti growing out of desolate brush. At first, my gaze went to the vast amounts of dead brambles that surrounded the new plants. But after seeing this pattern repeatedly, it finally sank in. It was as if Mother Earth was saying, “I am inviting you to focus on this new life, not the dead brush that surrounds it.”
It was a call to me to resist the temptation to rehearse what is old or without life—disappointments, personal losses, world chaos, etc—and choose to fill my vision with life-giving forces instead. To fill my vision with potential. It was a reminder to shed the dead brambles of my life as often as I need to, and simultaneously turn my eyes to the new growth that is always present.
Returning my mind and heart space again and again to an abundant reality is an anchoring source of divine feminine wisdom—a deliberate practice to make space for waves of love, hope, and gratitude.