It is beauty that will save us in the end.

Imagine that your past occupies a place in the attic of your mind. As the years fly by, memories of past challenges, defeats, upsets, and delights brought to you through family and work experiences, friendships, loves, and losses, are packed away in boxes, taped shut, and placed into the storage space in the far-reaches of your mind.

Whether your daily life routines have stayed fairly constant or you have moved many times into brand new situations, the memories have come along as a consistent frame of reference and a testimony to where you have come from.

Today, I want to invite you to make a shift in your perceptions so that your past can be opened up to, dusted off, and activated as a valuable inheritance of experiential wisdom. Your memories, approached correctly, can help fund the creation of a vibrant future, grown from the fertile seeds of your unique past experiences.

Attics and basements were a staple of most houses on the East Coast, where I was brought up. The attic was often stifling hot, cramped and suffocating. You would ascend a steep, narrow stairway, a storage box held precariously in hand, and deposit it in the nearest empty space, relieved to get down the stairs as quickly as possible and back to fresh air.

The basement was a different experience but similar to the attic, in that you only visited it when you absolutely had to. The basement was dark and dank and had either cement or wooden steps that creaked, leading down into the land where spiders and other creepy-crawlers made their home. The temperature was usually quite a bit cooler than the living space above. Not the cool that spells refreshing, but the kind that chills your bones and sets your teeth on edge.

Luckily, today I am only asking you to court the contents of the attic. We will save the basement for another day.

Since attics tend to be used as a place to store things that we have no immediate use for and want out of sight and out of mind, we need to move your stored memories to a better location.

As a first step, I want you to use your imagination to conjure up in your mind’s eye, a temple, a sacred space, and put it in a location that is pleasing to you. It may take the form of a church or a temple that you have visited in real life, or a place that you have seen in a photograph, or a movie. Once the temple is formed, stand outside of the entranceway. Do not enter inside just yet.

Your stored memories will be transported to this new location without you needing to do anything at all, and they will arrange themselves inside your temple, in whatever way will be most beneficial for you.

From this moment on, your memories, whether you have held them as mistakes, heart-hurts, achievements, validations, or disappointments, will now be housed in this sacred space.

This means that whenever you visit your temple of memory, you will practice the art of Spiritual Non-Interference. You will treat yourself with great tenderness, kindness, and compassion, and will finally let certain aspects of your life alone, so that healing can take place.

Many of us can be compassionate with others but are far too harsh with ourselves. Moving your memories to this sacred temple will allow a new kind of light to permeate your soul.

Your past is not gone but it has been boxed, labeled, hidden, discarded, and abandoned in your memory. Relocating your memories in this sacred temple will allow the wounded places in you to experience incredible healing.

Begin to soften and open to newfound levels of warmth in your soul.

Stand in front of the entrance into your sacred temple.

Step through the doorway and position yourself in the center of the room. Take in all that surrounds you.

Know that at this very moment, you are surrounded by the multiplicity of all the directions you have traveled.

The circle of your life is being brought together, right at this moment.

You are standing in the presence of timelessness. From this sacred point of view, your past, your present and your future are here and now.

This present moment is pregnant with your freedom to choose. Choose to own all that is beautiful about your life. It is beauty that will save us in the end.

  For additional information or to sign up to receive weekly articles by e-mail go to: www.susanvelasquez.com. You can reach Susan at: (949) 494-7773.

All things are perceived in the light of charity, and hence under the aspect of beauty: for beauty is simply Reality seen with the eyes of love. Evelyn Underhill – Mysticism (1955)

Subtlety 

In our fast moving, marketing and advertising driven world, subtlety is a dying art. Even the spelling of the word evokes a certain kind of curiosity.

I have always had an interest in advertising. I have noticed that the field is producing louder and more blatant messages that bombard our senses. The messages are filled with heavy-handed slogans with the intent to turn optional products into necessities that demand us to react, the faster and sooner, the better.

By the time I wade through the copious mail offers that promise an instant fix to problems I didn’t know I had, I am numb with exhaustion.

Years ago, during a water shortage, an ad that is a great example of the essence of subtlety appeared on billboards throughout the Southland. It depicted a person taking a shower and all it said was: “Sing shorter songs. “

When we approach ourselves and our lives as a problem to be solved, we put ourselves in danger of being assaulted by a never-ending influx of internal criticisms that increase our anxiety levels and flood our nervous system with static, until we lose contact with our innate ability to successfully manage our day to day affairs.

We begin to treat ourselves like a product instead of a process that is meant to unfold in communion with the subtle shifts and changes that come to us as opportunities for right action. When we overly identify with a perfectionist mind set, we lock our creative energy into a chokehold of commands, and demands, to perform and deliver outcomes that are driven by a frantic lusting after unattainable static results.

Reality becomes distorted with unexamined opinions, and judgments, that shine a harsh light on our accomplishments, as too insignificant to warrant any acceptance or acknowledgement of the rightness of our world, exactly as it is.

No wonder most of us are depleted and numb to the natural beauty that surrounds us.

When we approach our lives prefacing every action with an unconscious lead line that: “Things go better with more…money, love, attention, beauty, possessions, friends, vacations, clothes, etc., we become calibrated to a way of being that continually grasps, clings, commands, and demands that we stay ever-ready to pounce on every opportunity to elevate our image of ourselves, to new and glorious heights, for fear that if we let go of striving, fixing, and figuring out our next move, we will fall behind into oblivion.

There is another approach that, if embraced, brings an instant shift in our way of seeing. This new perception can only be utilized by developing a taste for the subtle side of reality.

When we approach our life situations as a reality to be experienced, rather than a problem to be solved, an interesting transformation takes place.

Imagine that you find yourself walking down a long hallway. There are many doors on either side. At the end of the hall are two doors. The one on the left has a sign on it that says: Problems to be Solved. The door on the right is marked with a sign stating: Reality to be Experienced. Out of habit, you are naturally drawn to the problem door. It is your normal way of approaching your life situations, so it feels more comfortable and familiar to you.

Go ahead and open the problem door. Enter in and take a moment to look around and make note of the most blatant problems that you are currently facing. Only stay for a short visit; just enough to assure yourself that everything is exactly as it was the last time you looked. Now come back into the hallway and place yourself in front of the second door. Don’t open it yet. Take a few gentle breaths and allow yourself to call on a deep sense of calmness. Feel yourself actually begin to settle, and still, your racing energy.

Remember that when you open this door, and enter in, there is nothing for you to do other than to allow yourself to be open, and receptive, to seeing yourself and your current life situations through more loving and accepting eyes. Now reach out, open the door, and step over the threshold.

Feel yourself subtlety, easily, gracefully, and quietly beginning to open to a fuller awareness and acceptance of the sense of rightness in the various aspects of your current life situations. Bring to mind people you love, experiences you cherish, and open to a deepening acceptance of your basic goodness, and the goodness of your life.

Trust this inner knowing, and feel it begin to permeate throughout your felt sense, as you gently breathe and feel yourself softening, surrendering, and opening your heart and mind, to allow the beginnings of delight to take root. As you stand, ready and willing, to widen your arms to encompass all aspects of your current reality just as it is, a new reality begins to dawn.

Perhaps, by courting subtlety, you will begin to discover and bring a new sense of lightness and ease to your handling of your life, as you realize that what you are seeking is also seeking you.