Create the Life You Imagine

"Joy is the happiness that doesn't depend on what happens." Brother David Steindl-Rast

We have all been living through difficult and challenging times. Three months ago, we couldn’t have imagined life under stay-at-home orders, working-at-home, students of all ages learning-at-home, feeling crowded at home with others or isolated at home alone, restaurants and stores closed, wearing masks in public, hospitals struggling to keep up and many of us or our loved ones facing real peril, both economic and physical, from a disease called COVID-19. This virus has triggered a wave of difficult and disruptive feelings which we are all experiencing to one degree or another: we are experiencing uncertainty, anxiety, and fear as we face conditions that are novel, unpredictable and threatening to our normal way of life; sadness, grief and loneliness as we have lost so many of our expected and ordinary ways of gathering and connecting with family and friends; disappointment, discouragement and despair as we have been forced to forego the important ceremonies and rituals that mark significant life passages, whether celebrating new babies, birthdays, graduations or marriages, or standing close during the illness or death of those we love; and increasingly we are feeling restlessness, frustration and anger as these conditions linger on longer than we like. While this range of difficult emotions are part of being human, when we all undergo these conditions at the same time the collective emotional experience can be more primal, intense and unsettling.

These conditions threaten to chip away at our sense of peace, freedom, well-being and joy. For those that followed my blog in 2019, you will remember that we can think about every experience of life from the perspective of our lower triangle small self or from the perspective of our upper triangle Soul Self. This world-wide turbulence is sending our lower triangle small self into a state of panic and dread. Remember that our lower triangle small self is always focused on the external conditions of the day and on scanning the world for signs of threat and peril. The small self experiences any change as dangerous and w