Today was a nice day. After a brutal winter storm week in Texas, USA, consisting of days without without heat, power, and water, today was finally different.
The skies opened up, the sun shone down, and a weight was lifted off the shoulders of so many people. While there is still the aftermath of the storm that millions of people are dealing with, today there was a lightness in the air.
With the opening of the skies, you could also feel the opening of people's hearts. Not in terms of generosity and compassion. That was there all week, especially as people came together and helped each other during hard times.
Rather, people carried less weight on their shoulders, myself included. Life cleared a path after obstructing it for a while. Consequently, we opened our own inner path, letting our energy run more freely.
The important thing is to notice this opening.
It's perfectly fine if your mood shifts based on the outside world. We're all subject to Mother Nature and of course, other people. But, when our inner world changes as a response to an outer occurrence, do you notice that, or do you neglect that important shift?
Your path to wellbeing starts within noticing your inner tendency to react to every little thing that happens in your heart, mind, and in the outside world.
Due to our extreme conditioning to external stimuli, we take it for granted that our mood is based on what's going on around us. Of course I'm going to be upset if I lose power, heat, and water! Why wouldn't I be!?
No one is saying you shouldn't be upset. But are you noticing that you're upset? Are you continuously watching your moods, and how they ebb and flow based on something that happened around you?
When you practice living from this place of being the witness, you center yourself behind the chaos. Yes, the melodrama of the mind still exists, but you're now watching it, rather than being lost in it. This is a subtle, yet profound difference in how you live your life.
As the watcher, you're able to experience a situation and then let it go more easily. You're able to move through discomfort, and not get stuck in it.
When you fail to watch and instead are caught in the egoic mind, you're subject to all its volatility. You're not too different from a tennis ball in a clothes dryer. As the witness, however, you're watching the spin cycle from the outside. You can hear it, it's still chaotic, but you're not in there, and that's the key difference.
Life opened up today, but really, my heart opened up. I no longer carried the fear, the anxiety, the frustrations that came along with being cooped up with little food and water. I was now well fed, and the sun was shining.
I'm not ashamed that I started feeling better. I'm just glad that I took note of it. I got to witness, yet again, just how dependent my inner state is to an outer event.
Yes, I've still got work to do.
Yes, I must keep watching.
Live with substance!
Gabe Orlowitz
