INSIGHT

BECOMING MIRACLE MINDED

By Michelle Despault

If you ask my son what is the most important thing, he will tell you it is love.

We have been very intentional as parents to be planting these seeds in his youth, so he does not grow up with the sense that his possessions, wealth, or how much others approve of him are the metrics of the value of life. We offer love as an alternative measure, and tell him that if he follows his heart and his actions flow from love, good things will inevitably result.

There are two major forces at work in our lives: love and fear. Each day, in every thought we have, action we take, and choice we make, we are driven by either love or fear.

When we feel joy, happiness, gratitude, compassion, appreciation, or any of the higher emotions, we are being driven by love. Love is everything that lights us up. When we feel hatred, anger, disappointment, jealousy, doubt, resentment, or any other of the lower emotions, we are being driven by fear. Fear is anything that weakens our spirit.

We may think that hate is the opposite of love, but in the absence of love it is actually fear that is the dominant force. Fear is what, if left unchecked, festers into jealousy, anger, and hatred. Fear of difference, of “otherness,” of change, of the unknown, of not being good enough, of not being accepted. Fear of not being loved or lovable.

Love is the essence of who we are. Giving and receiving love are essential to our existence; in fact, I believe that our purpose here is to be love and to spread love. How we choose to express that purpose is up to each of us. For many of you, the choice of the teaching profession is your expression of that love. In A Return to Love, Marianne Williamson writes: “Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we have learned here. The spiritual journey is the relinquishment – or unlearning – of fear and the acceptance of love back into our hearts. Love is the essential existential fact. It is our ultimate reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life.”

Yet despite love being our essence, a loving response is often not our default.

Think of the last time you were cut off in traffic. A typical response, depending on the severity of the infraction, would range from outright anger to mild name -calling. Rarely would we respond with compassion for the other driver, sympathizing with whatever unknown issues they were dealing with that day. We feel wronged and justified in our anger. So much so that we complain to other people about it and get their validation of how wronged we were.

When we respond to negative energy with more negative energy, we sink deeper away from love. We can physically feel how we are cut off and separate from love. And too often, we take that negative energy and emotion with us into our next interaction.

These moments are opportunities for us to consider our responses. Think of the traffic infraction – why exactly are we so upset? What has been triggered in us? Is it that we could have been hurt? Is it the lack of concern shown by the other person? Peel back the layers to look deeper, and what you will find is some level of fear.

Physiologically there is a real pull toward a fear-based response – it is often automatic, or our default. Author Gabrielle Bernstein calls it a “miracle” to choose love-based responses over fearbased responses because of how difficult it can be. It is not easy to transcend our own feelings, but we need to be mindful of our responses, and actively choose love-based responses instead. Bernstein calls this a “miracle mindset.” It is “a belief system free of limitation, doubt, judgment, separation and attack. It’s unlikely that we’ll ever fully live with this mindset all the time, but our goal is to strengthen it.” So while compassion for the a-hole driver may be out of reach, we can choose irritation over anger, or maybe we can even bring ourselves to simply let it go. In doing so we move closer to love.

Our emotions are a continuum, and moving up that continuum is the key. The first step is to actually notice the emotional and physical response you have when you are triggered. Then, instead of automatically responding in a way that is consistent with that emotion, catch yourself and choose a more loving response instead – even if it is only one step higher on the continuum.

Most of the time we must actively choose love. It is not easy. And people and circumstances certainly do not conspire to help us. But the more we choose it, the easier it becomes to live it.

Michelle Despault is Director of Communications at the OECTA Provincial Office.