Sunshine or Shadow

Keep your face to the sunshine

and you cannot see a shadow.

Helen Keller

The weather was beautiful yesterday and I was able to return to my three mile walking route.  It was glorious to be outside with the sun shining on my face accompanied by a gentle breeze.  I heard the birds chirping and watched the squirrels darting in and out of their secret hiding spaces.  The trees and flowers reflected a vibrant energy that seemed to lift my spirits easily.

Too frequently I hide my face from the radiant sun and find myself standing in the shadows.  If I would just momentarily linger in the shadows examining the effects of the sun, I would be fine, but unfortunately, once I step into the shadows, I have the tendency to get stuck.

In his book, The New Earth, Eckhart Tolle talks about the pain body.  (If my copy of this excellent book were not packed away, I would be sharing wonderful quotes.)  Eckhart Tolle speaks about the pain body living within us, waking up and desiring to be fed...with drama and emotions.  We over feed it, stuffing it with endless drama, building negative energies in the process.  Eventually, the pain body is stuffed and goes back to sleep.  Then our life goes on for awhile until the pain body wakes again, demanding to be fed.

Have you ever been just perfectly fine and then some negative thought flits across your mind?  We click on rewind and then pause.  We look at this pain and recall how it felt and the emotional reactions it caused.  This viewing once again awakens the original pain, increases the pain with additional emotions, and leaves us feeling terrible once again.  This is orchestrated by the pain body.

It is in our best interest to be able to recognize the demands of the pain body to be fed.  Compare it to being on a diet.  Our tummy growls, but we learn to distract our self and not immediately force down unnecessary foods.  The same is true for the pain body.  When it makes demands to be fed, we need to distract ourselves by not recalling old memories that will cause us to feel badly.  Instead, we must consciously choose to bring positive emotional thoughts into our awareness in order to feel loved and whole.

So when we find our selves standing in the shadows, getting chilled and feeling alone, let's turn our face to the sun.  Let the sun shine upon us and warm us with the promise that we are never really alone.