Different Perspectives

October 14, 2020

Fall in Vermont is beautiful. We have lots of mountains and the leaves on the trees turn from green to beautiful shades of red, orange, yellow, and light green. Many tourists come to take pictures and many of the locals post pictures on Facebook. The pictures don’t do the vibrant colors any justice. In order to truly appreciate the magnificient colors, one must look at it through their own eyes. They must feel a connection with the colors, the mountains, and with the wonder of nature. It is truly a sign of beauty before Mother Nature releases the leaves to the ground.

That’s where a different perspective is found. I love my beautiful trees, but, all of a sudden, I have a lot of work to do. Those leaves fall all over my lawn and if they aren’t taken care of properly, my lawn will be ruined. Not necessarily this fall, but next spring. The leaves pile on top of each other. If the leaves fall in the forest, nature goes to work to decompose them. Otherwise, we would have a forest filled with leaves taller than me! That doesn’t happen though. Nature releases the leaves from the trees and then lets them go. They transition.

With every wheelbarrow full of leaves, I have been thinking about what I want to let go in my life; mostly old negative patterns of thinking. I have been studying NLP; short for Neuro-Linguistic Programming. It’s a fancy term for saying our brains are always working on past experiences. How we perceive a situation or event is always related to something in our past. Learning to understand the language of my brain has been a transition for me.

I am learning to recognize the negative and rewire my thoughts. Neuro is for the physical, mental, and emotional parts that make us human. Linguistic is how we communicate with ourselves and others. Programming is basically thinking about our brains like a computer operating system. Our brains are wired based on past experiences; with thoughts and emotions affecting our new experiences each and every day. Sometimes these program settings date back to when we were really young.

I wrote in my book, More Dimes From Heaven A Journey to Self Publishing, about subconscious vs conscious thoughts. Our subconscious controls up to 90% of what we do. It’s part of the hidden or societal curriculum defined by Cortes (1981); “the massive, ongoing informal curriculum of family, peer groups, neighborhoods, churches, organizations, occupations, mass media, and other socializing forces that ‘educate’ all of us about our lives.” The tricky part here is that most of this, we internalize at a very young age. “Our subconscious controls our beliefs, emotions, habits, values, protective reactions, long term memory, imagination, and intuition.” ~Monica Morrissey

One of the first times that I truly tapped into my subconscious thoughts was during a meditation based on Nancy Levin’s book The New Relationship Blueprint: 10 Steps to Reframe the Way You Love. She suggests remembering back to when I was 4 or 5ish. What do I remember? When I did this, I felt many things come up about that shaped who I am. I was holding onto things that I didn’t need to anymore; just like a leaf trying to stay on a tree when it was time to let go. It was time for me to let go of some of the old patternings that were within me since I was young.

Those old beliefs from when I was young and wasn’t able to process the information are old and outdated; like the decomposing leaves under the newly fallen leaves. It’s time to let go and start fresh. Nature does this naturally. Each year, the forest sheds the old, spends time being quiet in the winter months, and then starts fresh in the spring. We can do the same thing. Let go of the old, reflect, and start anew with different perspectives.

I enjoy raking my leaves. I love the smell of them because they remind me of jumping in a pile of leaves when I was a child and when my own children were young. People who visit Vermont may never understand what it means to jump in a pile of leaves. But I do. I know how much fun it is and how good it smells. It’s my perspective based on prior experiences. Someone else might never understand this. They will look at the pretty mountains and think that is all there is to pretty leaves. I know that leaves are so much more than that.

What happened in your life to bring your perspective to where you are now? What other perspectives do people in your life have that may be different than yours?

In my first book, I struggled with understanding a different perspective on death. As a child, my parents didn’t discuss death so I internalized that once someone was gone, we didn’t talk about them. We most definitely didn’t “feel” them around us because that would be way too weird. I’ve changed my perspective on death and so many other things in life. Death to me is transitioning back to Spirit form; a new beginning like leaves in the springtime. It’s a new form of life. One that is connected to universal intelligence. One that is difficult for the conscious mind to understand. One where unexpected dimes, rainbows, and the word Haven show up. One that you have to feel the connection inside of you; like when I breathe in the smell of leaves and remember what it feels like to jump in a pile. One that is difficult to explain to those who don’t believe; like the tourists who don’t understand what it feels like to jump in a pile of leaves.

Transitioning to Spirit is a totally different perspective that I choose to believe in. May you have a Blessed day and feel your loved ones nearby.