Rearranging the furniture

I remember when I heard an On Being Podcast interview with Joanna Macey. She talked about times in her life when she learned something deeply profound. In those moments, she said she felt the furniture of her mind rearrange. As I heard this, I felt a rusty chair scrape across the floor of my mind. It was a small shift. It was the first of many to come as I have embarked on the journey of remodeling my life. I always know I've struck emotional-learning gold when I feel my mind's furniture shift. Have you ever felt your furniture shift? If you haven't, it's a physical sensation of shifting something from one location to another. You suddenly find yourself in a new world while standing right where you were a moment ago.

Later, on a podcast-filled drive, I was listening to an interview with pastor and biblical scholar Eugene Peterson. He talked about a parishioner who asked him for a set of verses that she could stretch her mind around. I lit up with recognition. I knew exactly what she was looking for! I have come to love finding phrases that I can so deeply ponder the meaning of that I feel myself shift and expand to embody all of the nooks and crannies of that new information.

It doesn't come automatically, all of this rearranging and stretching. Information comes at us so fast in life that we have built strong mental filters. The challenge is that these filters can put us in robo-mode where we see, read, or hear something, and hardly give it a thought. How often have you recited a prayer or mantra, year after year saying the words without thinking about what is being said? For example, I remember it wasn't until my teenage years that I stopped and wondered to myself, "what does elemenohpee mean in the alphabet song?"... it's not even a word! Then it clicked...wait a minute.... ohhh! L. m. n. o. p! Now I get it! Yep, I was that kid. There are many others that come to mind. The Lord's prayer, the serenity prayer, all words often blindly spoken, yet when we stop and wonder, take something phrase by phrase, or even word by word and then apply it to your life situation, sometimes the furniture shifts in our mind, we pause and stretch into it. Here are some of my favorite phrases. What phrases are you shifting and stretching into?

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. -Anais Nin.

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. -Anais Nin

We don’t see things how they are, we see them as we are. -Anais Nin

Just keep swimming. - Dory the fish

Don’t worry if those around you aren’t doing their best. Just worry about how to make yourself worthy. -- Unknown

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

—Rumi