When I was little, my mother once asked me to bring a jar of tomatoes from the storage cellar. I started down the steep stairway, but as I descended, the door at the top of the stairs closed behind me with a bang. The storage room was totally dark and I didn’t know how to find the light switch. I started breathing fast because, in those days, I was convinced that bears lurked in every closet. I even believed that bears hid behind the trees in the vacant lot next to our house and I ran very fast when I had to go past so they couldn’t grab me.
I was very frightened as I began groping around the walls, trying to find the light switch before a bear got me. At last I found it, high up on the wall. I stretched as high as I could and flipped the switch.
Instantly, the dark, windowless room was illuminated, every corner visible. The bears must have gone out for lunch, because there weren’t any. Instead, I could see jars of bright red tomatoes, green beans, deep yellow peaches, and dark red cherry preserves with whole cherries, and more, all lined up neatly on shelves, just as my grandmother had placed them when canning season was over.
Instead of a dark room full of danger, there was a bright room full of delicious treasures. It was the same room, but without the light switch in the “on” position, I could not see what it really contained.
We all have an internal light switch which we can turn on and off. For some people, their switch is permanently off, and the world appears dark, hopeless, and dangerous. For others, the switch goes on and off unpredictably because they don’t know how to find it and control it. But when we find our “on/off switch” and learn how to keep it turned on, we feel energetic, optimistic, loving and safe because we can see that the world is full of beauty and amazing gifts.
The popular teaching is to program our minds with positive thoughts and the positive thoughts and ideas will bring positive changes to our lives. That is a mental approach. We need more than that – we need to flip our light switch on so that we see the whole world as a world of light.
Would you like to find your light switch? Would you like to feel delighted with what you see in the world? Would you like to feel happy and optimistic about the future? I would be happy to talk with you for 20 minutes at no charge to see if we might be able to work together.
To arrange an appointment, you may e-mail me at dorothyseeger@gmail.com.