Reflection & Perspective, How We Gain Spiritual Growth!

This time of year many of us may find ourselves busy concentrating on the holiday demands of travel, family, and festivities. We can also find time to review our lives that were lived these past 12 months. By using reflection & perspective processes of past events, we can see if we are making some progress refining our soul. 

We create memories via photos, video, and social media to record to those special moments that we experience.

Time with family, growth of children, good times with friends, we take the time to document these happy moments.

However, just like smart phones, home computers, tablets, and web servers, within ourselves is our own recording mechanism, also called memory. Our own human memory serves us so that we may be able to reflect upon our own passing of time and events.

Unlike social media, our human memory records it all, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Every moment we are aware, our own human hard drives are collecting data second by second.

Unlike technical hardware, we cannot so easily delete or change memories. Life is just not as easy as managing a social media account.

We cannot, with the click of a mouse, simply erase mistakes or negative experiences in life.

As we look over this past year, there may be some painful experiences lived or carried over from past years of our lives.

Sometimes we may wish that we could take those experiences and memories and just throw them in the trash can.

We may think that we have no choice, no control, unlike the ease we do with our smart phones or computers.

The Rubber Band Exercise

Here’s an exercise that can help when looking back at this year and beyond.

Get a rubber band and hold it lightly between the tips of your index fingers of both hands. Do not stretch the rubber band either way, but just allow it to hover gently between your index fingers.

Designate either finger as good or bad. Now, think of a memory that was not so pleasant and stretch the rubber band in the bad direction and hold.

Do you feel the tension? Now, relax it back. Now, think of a good memory and stretch the rubber band out towards the good direction.

Do you feel the tension? Isn’t it ironic that no matter what direction you pull, good or bad, there still exists tension?

Now, hold the rubber band gently again. Do you see how it circles between your two index fingers? You can trace the rubber band around in a circle from one finger, to the next, and back. What this illustrates is the concept of duality and the cycles of life.

The Cycles Of Life

Every year, there is a beginning and an end, just as each of your index fingers represent. Within that year good times come, as well as bad times. As you pull in one direction in your life, tension is felt, just like the rubber band. However, just like the ease with which one can feel that rubber band resting between two fingers, we ourselves can strive to find balance in our lives and become centered.

Science says that for every force exerted, there is an equal and opposite force returned. In our own human and spiritual lives, this same principle holds true. The rubber band exercise can allow us to see how important it is that we honor all that life gives us.

To be balanced and centered is just like exercise, it takes work. In stretching a rubber band as described, we can actually feel the truth in this life principle. To experience bad is not necessarily bad at all. It is more about how one looks at an experience.

Just as a rubber band is stretched in one direction, a negative experience contains the greatest potential to return in the opposite direction. Our own healing in life can be nurtured by being aware of this process.

The Duality Of Life

Our human lives are surrounded by duality, good and bad, light and dark. Just like plants that require periods of light and darkness, we too need light in our lives, as well as darkness.

Those extremes of experience are all happening within cycles of life, or the sum of what lies between the extremes, or our two index fingers. Our 12 months of the year, our 24 hours in a day, and the four seasons bring with it a message of cycles of birth and decay.

The circle that is the rubber band shows us that there are stages to grieving, there are steps for growth, there is a measurable path to travel between our two index fingers. Life is no different. Life is very much like traveling along a circular path between two extremes.

We have to experience all that life has to offer for us to appreciate how everything is required for balance. The rubber band exercise can help us to visualize this spiritual concept.

So, as you look back at this past year, just remember that there is a reason for everything. With good times, there are bad times. With happiness, there is sadness. We would not appreciate one extreme without the other. We can think of many examples of this. If we keep ourselves dwelling on the bad, we will feel tension in our lives, just like our fingers getting tired stretching that rubber band.

Looking back over this past year and beyond, try to take in the sum of everything.

Sometimes it may not be easy to find the good to balance things out, but it is assuredly there. If you take that rubber band and twist it once, you’ll find it creates the symbol of infinity. No matter how you stretch it, the intersection always remains in the middle.

As we expand in our own consciousness and awareness in life, there are literally infinite possibilities in life through becoming balanced and centered within ourselves. Recognizing the duality of life and the cycles of change we go through can help us all to reach our highest potential.

We all want to be the best we can be. The rubber band exercise is one way to visualize how we can balance out our own internal programming and memory. We can see that within us is infinite and limitless opportunities awaiting.

Bright Blessings

MarVeena Meek

(c) Jan 2015

 

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