The Power is Yours

“You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew.” Albert Einstein

A memory loop. 

A feeling of being “stuck”. 

You're struggling with an emotionally-charged issue and your own thoughts are screaming over any solution. 

Your mind pulses with old messages.

Thoughts run in circles. 

Insecurities scream. 

To avoid facing the pain your mind perceives, it moves into protection-mode. It tries to convince you the problem is unsolvable. It tells you you can't handle it. It says anything it can to get you to move away from the issue. If you believe these lies you bury your emotions under another layer of denial.

But the issue hasn't been solved. You become aware of your inability to take right action—or any action—and become frustrated. This added emotional charge convinces your mind that it was right. You can’t handle this, it says, and the cycle begins again. 

The rut becomes deeper.

It's time for a new perspective. Here it is:

You are so much more powerful than you've been led to believe.

You are so much more powerful than your mind can conceive. 

Like a computer, your physical brain follows preset patterns. It's working exactly as it's meant to. The problem isn’t your mind. 

It's what you're storing in it. 

Your brain is clogged with a plethora of emotionally-charged messages. You've been putting them in there your whole life. What you need is a good cleaning—a defrag and then a reboot.  

Don't forget:

You are so much more powerful than you've been led to believe.

You are so much more powerful than your mind can conceive. 

Your brain is cluttered with the refuse of your life—with every old message and emotion you haven't released. Like any good computer, your brain is equipped with a program to remove this clutter. You can run this program anytime you want. Yes, Dorothy, you've had the power all along. If you find yourself slogging along in slow circles, it's time. 

Oh, your mind may tell you it’s not possible. 

It may try to stop you. 

If you let it, your mind might self-protect you into permanent inaction. 

But, if you’re ready to go back to the kind of clarity you were born with—if you're tired of Oz and you want to go home, try this:

Close your eyes. 

Tell your mind to be quiet. 

Tell it again.
Keep telling it. 

Override the messages and images that blare forth until your mind finally gives in.

Now sit in stillness.  

And breathe.

That's it. 

Does a fish have awareness of the water it lives in? 

You live in an energy field. Light waves… sound waves… millions of bombarding bits of energy constantly envelop you. You're just so used to it you don't notice it anymore. But here, behind your closed eyes, in the stillness, you can become aware of that energy. 

Open to it. 

Feel it tingling on your skin. 

Pull it in with each breath. 

If your fear comes up again, let it. Give it a color. Step inside the fear and allow it engulf you. Notice the thoughts that feed it. Notice the thoughts that try to keep you from it. That's just your brain trying to protect you from your feelings. It doesn't understand that your feelings are normal—that you can handle it. 

Comfort your mind. 

Let it know that you have feelings—they don’t have you. 

Study your fear. 

Discover your rage. 

Let the tears come. 

There’s nothing else you have to do. 

Just breathe and let it happen. 

It really is that easy.

How long have you carried these feelings and thoughts? 

Years? 

Decades? 

Lifetimes?

It may take that long again to remove it all from your system. 

Don't let that discourage you. 

With each little bit you release, your mind becomes clearer. As you gradually come to trust the process, it will get easier. You will come to know that you are safe even in your strongest emotional state. 

You are always safe. 

Then, as new emotional issues arise, you can walk right through them instead of storing them away. You can take them in stride without judging them. They are not good or bad, they just are and you don't have to carry them around with you. 

Your mind is amazing. It can do so many things but it isn't completely aware of it's abilities or it's limitations. It is a wonderful tool but it isn't you. 

You can take charge.

You can handle it. 

You can use your breath and the calm voice of your own inner wisdom to guide you through the painful parts of life. 

The power has always been yours. 

Summer-Blue

Small and new to the world, she looked up and found that the sky was summer-blue. The brilliance of it took her breath away. 

Such a vibrant, living sky! 

She stared at it with wonder, knowing this was where she was meant to be. All day she played in the azure glow.

And then it was night and the sky grew cold and black. 

She went inside and closed the door against the longing, mourning the summer-blue.

A little bigger and a little less new, she opened the door. She took just one step beyond the door, but nowhere was the summer-blue. A vast storm covered the world, horizon to horizon.

Gray and swirling.

Anger rumbling.

A flash of terror!

She slammed the door.

But she remembered the summer-blue.

In dreams and reverie, the warm memory of the azure glow ached inside her.  She pushed it aside, aside, aside and then, one day, she opened the door again. She wasn't so brave as to step outside, but even from the doorway she saw no summer-blue. Instead, the sky was dressed in white, attended by a frigid wind. Snow swirled and blew so hard she could barely close the door to its frantic appeal.

This time she shuttered the windows, closing herself more securely in her safe little room. She painted the ceiling blue. This is the sky, she told herself. Here, it will never change. I will always be safe.

She closed her eyes and waited for the warmth of that still-remembered glow. When it didn't come, she became one with the ache and told herself there was nothing beyond the door.

She became an adult within the shuttered windows and a closed door. Even as the seasons passed, she was safe. Even as her inner sky yellowed and pealed around the edges, she was safe. Even as the longing grew, she was safe.

And desperately miserable.

And wondered why?

Wasn't her inner sky every bit as good as that distant memory?
Didn't she have everything she required to survive?

Wasn't this room with its perfectly shuttered windows and impenetrable door exactly what she needed?

“Outside isn’t safe,” she told herself. “I have blue right here. Right here in my safe little room.”

She scowled at the dull and lifeless ceiling and then at her own reflection growing 

Anger

Longing

Despair

And it filled her up and her misery grew and finally she said, “Fine!" She flung the door wide and stepped through her fear, through her gritted teeth, through her resolve. She walked through the cold and through the darkness and through the constant barrage of her own misleading mind and then she saw it.
Had it been there all along?
The sky was summer-blue. And she remembered 

Light

Warmth

Life

And fear.
Fear was the illusion that kept her safe and she was so afraid to see. Too afraid to know know the summer-blue. For knowing it was to risk a return of the cold and the dark and the painful wind.

She returned to her safe little room and closed the door, falling deep into her delusion of safety in the one place where nothing would ever truly be safe... in her own private and unidentified hell.