Finding Your Inner Spring

When I left for southern California the last weekend in March, it was with the full expectation that I’d return home a week later to a city that had finally put winter behind it.  Instead, I awoke this Monday to the sight of more snowflakes falling from the sky!  Even for those of you who don’t mind winter (or even love it!) this week may be the final straw as the desire to feel the warm sun mixed with the cool aromatic spring breeze on your skin grows stronger with each passing moment.

So how can you create your own sense of spring when Mother Nature is imposing a different agenda?  How do you experience a change you desire when the outer world seems hell bent on mirroring back the opposite?  We often hear that change starts from within, and then our outer circumstances will begin to shift, but then there are those times when the results we desire seem a bit slow to arrive. . .

In the practice of Reiki, the instructions for meditating on the precepts (principles that affirm one’s true self or true nature) ask us to morning and evening place our hands in gassho (prayer position).  This practice of starting and ending your day with intention helps you to align with the energy you want to embody throughout the day as well as the energy you want to settle into as your day winds down.  

Over time, this practice of framing your day with intention reinforces the inner experience of your deepest desires, even when your outer world has yet to catch up.  Eventually, the energy springs up so strongly that it can’t help but influence your experience of the world around you.   While none of us have control over the weather patterns and how nature decides to transition seasons, the more we allow our daily practices, habits and rituals to align with the spirit of spring, the less the weather will even matter.  For myself, I am seeing this extended winter as an opportunity to do some deeper spring cleaning at home so when the weather does become nicer, I will feel even more free to enjoy and appreciate my time outside. 

When we don’t see the world reflecting back to us what we most desire, it becomes an opportunity to dig in deeper on a soul level to embody the energy of our intentions.  It is an invitation from spirit to take greater responsibility for the changes we want to make and not passively rely on our circumstances to take us there.  To do this, it is not only important to greet each day with clear intention, but to also use your daily rituals, habits and activities to engage the energy of those intentions as well as use your natural intuitive sensitivities to guide you in the direction of your desires.  When you make it a habit to return to your intentions and activate the energy you want to experience throughout the day, your natural sensitivities will automatically kick in and you will find yourself seeing, feeling, hearing and even tasting the things in your world that align with those intentions.  I know for myself, on the grayest of days, I soooo appreciate the colorful sight of the flowers on the stands outside the corner stores, and the joyful sound of silly laughter coming from young children.  These reinforce my intention to allow spring to unfold from deep within this year instead of waiting around for Mother Nature to do all the work for me!