Where Are You Looking?

Good Morning!

It’s the first weekend in October, and the countdown for the holiday season is on. I don’t know about you, but I’m still recovering from last year! Seriously, what better time to consider the importance of self-care and reacquaint ourselves with our spiritual wellbeing. Intentionality may be the recipe for a compassion-filled outlook in the coming months.

I’ve been on a journey to reignite the passion I formerly held for every day delights. When I recently realized how far from actualizing my human-being-ness I drifted, I began to look at my daily routine to see where I needed to exercise greater intentionality.

My conclusion won’t surprise you. As I’m confident many of you have experienced, the first step was addressing my spiritual wellbeing. Not that I’ve abandoned my beliefs in any way, just that it’s so easy to take things for granted or delay important time to look above and within. I needed to adjust my focus and determine where was I looking.

I found this lovely Quero Apache prayer that seemed to embody my thoughts:

We’ve heard much about learning from our victories and defeats with gratitude for the opportunities. We’ve also known the importance of creating a vision to build a framework for future endeavors. There are volumes written on both. Coaches help to guide and direct us, and webinars, workshops, and conventions provide all the materials we could ever need to master these concepts, providing roadmaps and suggestions in abundance.

However, when it comes to finding inner strength and peace, our focus needs to adjust. We benefit from altering our gaze from external stimuli to internal concentration. As we look upward in whatever discipline we have adopted, we learn to release our limited understanding and control to greater consciousness.

Many different names come to mind, and we have the freedom to choose whom we rely on for spiritual direction. Looking upward releases powers out of our reach, and by surrendering to them, we gain insight. We can take the deeper dive within to receive blessings and ultimately enter into the peace we all so desire with this insight.

The following is one of my favorite passages of Scripture:

“The Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace” Numbers 6:24-26 (NKJV)

I love this blessing because it reminds me that we have complete access to all the blessings from above. All we have to do is look upward, receive the blessings and then look inward to activate the promised peace. It seems pretty straightforward. The caveat is that we have to do the looking. We must be intentional and focus our gaze on the Giver. It’s that easy. Okay, maybe not easy because we seem to enjoy making things difficult in our humanness, but you catch my drift. Make the first move, look upward then inward, and see what happens.

This week, let’s experiment with being intentional about where we’re looking. Let’s engage our curiosity and wondering as we seek to improve our quality of life by refocusing. I’m excited to hear of all the breakthroughs and new perspectives we realize!

Be Well & Be Blessed!
Lucinda