Do you check your inner soundtrack, as you wake and at other times during the day? Do you notice how this can set the mood for the day, for good or otherwise? Do certain songs, popping up in your mind, connect you to certain people, life themes or memories? Do you find you sometimes need to change what's playing inside your head?
This is a very effective way of checking your attitude, including thoughts and feelings you may be carrying that have not risen to your full awareness but may condition or even control what you will encounter in the course of the day. You know, don't you, that your attitude walks ahead of you, helping to generate events and encounters around the next corner.This is because you are magnetic. Unfortunately, however, you are often less than fully conscious of what you attract and repel -until and unless you look back carefully on a certain episode and begin to discern its hidden logic.
Checking your inner soundtrack is an easy way to check your attitude. I do this several times a day. It might start effortlessly because I wake with a snatch of a song in my head. This is may carry a mood from a dream, or part of the soundtrack of a dream movie, or may anticipate the mood of the day. It may connect me to people or places at a distance, or a certain period of my life.
When I am lucky, a song from the night may be an original composition. I will then spring into action to try to record it before it is gone. Like the dreamers of many indigenous traditions, I know that a dream-inspired song is one of the great gifts of dreaming. It can be a way to bring through energy and spirit from a deeper place. It can be a wing song that will help you travel from the ordinary world into real worlds beyond it.
A Texas woman told me, “I wake up with different music every day. Today I woke up with "Shake it Off" by Taylor Swift. In the dream I was watching a sad news story on television. I have not heard that song in a long time. I took it as a message to keep a good attitude during the day, focus my attention on positive things and shake off the bad stuff coming though the TV.”
A Vancouver dreamer said, “Today I accept the song that was with me when I woke and I will let it play all day. ‘Calling All Angels’.”
The song on your inner soundtrack may connect you to another person in your life, maybe someone at a distance. A friend told me that a song she used to sing for her son when he was very small will still pop into her head when he is thinking of her and getting ready to call her or visit her. The song is “He’s Got the Whole World In His Hands.” She smiles when it starts playing on her inner soundtrack, remembering the joy of slapping hands with her little boy as he tried to reproduce the words.
When you check your inner soundtrack, don’t just listen to the music, find the words that may or may not come with a tune. Check for voices from the past that may be cheering you on or bringing you down. Catch yourself when you start going over and over old histories of failure or regret, belittling yourself, telling yourself what’s wrong with you in a way that cannot help you to be right. You may notice that an inner voice has been repeating things like, “I’m such an idiot” or, “I’m in so much pain” or “I’ll never be able to face that crowd, or that person”.
Your inner soundtrack may include a whole chorus of voices of people who have lifted you up or pulled you down. Don’t let all of them speak! Choose the ones you are willing to hear. Above all, check your personal mantras. These are codes for connection and manifestation. These are the magic words that can deform your life or open up avenues of bright possibility. You may have borrowed some of your personal mantras from a spiritual teacher, or a favorite book, or one of those oh-so-cute boxes in your Facebook newsfeed.
I have nothing against feel-good affirmations and statements of spiritual correctness, as long as they work. This means that they come to mind when you need them, when you need to respond to a challenge or make a choice at a crossroads. It means that they are playing on your inner soundtrack before you hit a select button.
When you check your inner soundtrack, you may find that your personal mantras include:
“I’m sick.”
“I’m fat.”
“I’ll never meet the right guy.”
“I’ll never have enough money.”
There’s no need for me to expand the list. You want to make your own. When you detect a negative mantra of this kind on your inner playlist, you can try to delete it, but may find that it comes back. You can try to override it with happy tunes and feel-good affirmations. I find that sometimes the best tactic is not to try to cancel a long-playing blues number right away, but to trip lightly around it, saying and singing better numbers.
Walking my dog in the park one morning, I checked my inner soundtrack and found I was engaged in making an inventory of the complaints in my aging body, all featuring pain. The pain in my dodgy knee, the pain in my shoulder, the pain of inflammation in one of my toes, the possible beginnings of a sore throat.
I hit my inner pause button. I did not try to deny that my body was expressing these complaints, and might need to be acknowledged. We don’t want to push away what may be part of our body wisdom, or — in my case — my body crying out for a little TLC. All I did was shift my attention to the dappled light among the beech trees, the gentle breeze stirring the surface of the lake and playing with my hair, the happiness of my little dog as he nosed after new smells and the nether parts of other dogs. And I said to the wind and the sun and the trees, “Thank you. Thank you for the gift of this day, for being able to walk among trees, by water, with a dog who loves me no matter what. Thank you for the gifts and the challenges of this lifetime.”
The best answer to inner naysayers and whiners may be to say to the universe: Thank you.
Checking your inner soundtrack is an easy way to check your attitude. I do this several times a day. It might start effortlessly because I wake with a snatch of a song in my head. This is may carry a mood from a dream, or part of the soundtrack of a dream movie, or may anticipate the mood of the day. It may connect me to people or places at a distance, or a certain period of my life.
When I am lucky, a song from the night may be an original composition. I will then spring into action to try to record it before it is gone. Like the dreamers of many indigenous traditions, I know that a dream-inspired song is one of the great gifts of dreaming. It can be a way to bring through energy and spirit from a deeper place. It can be a wing song that will help you travel from the ordinary world into real worlds beyond it.
A Texas woman told me, “I wake up with different music every day. Today I woke up with "Shake it Off" by Taylor Swift. In the dream I was watching a sad news story on television. I have not heard that song in a long time. I took it as a message to keep a good attitude during the day, focus my attention on positive things and shake off the bad stuff coming though the TV.”
A Vancouver dreamer said, “Today I accept the song that was with me when I woke and I will let it play all day. ‘Calling All Angels’.”
The song on your inner soundtrack may connect you to another person in your life, maybe someone at a distance. A friend told me that a song she used to sing for her son when he was very small will still pop into her head when he is thinking of her and getting ready to call her or visit her. The song is “He’s Got the Whole World In His Hands.” She smiles when it starts playing on her inner soundtrack, remembering the joy of slapping hands with her little boy as he tried to reproduce the words.
When you check your inner soundtrack, don’t just listen to the music, find the words that may or may not come with a tune. Check for voices from the past that may be cheering you on or bringing you down. Catch yourself when you start going over and over old histories of failure or regret, belittling yourself, telling yourself what’s wrong with you in a way that cannot help you to be right. You may notice that an inner voice has been repeating things like, “I’m such an idiot” or, “I’m in so much pain” or “I’ll never be able to face that crowd, or that person”.
Your inner soundtrack may include a whole chorus of voices of people who have lifted you up or pulled you down. Don’t let all of them speak! Choose the ones you are willing to hear. Above all, check your personal mantras. These are codes for connection and manifestation. These are the magic words that can deform your life or open up avenues of bright possibility. You may have borrowed some of your personal mantras from a spiritual teacher, or a favorite book, or one of those oh-so-cute boxes in your Facebook newsfeed.
I have nothing against feel-good affirmations and statements of spiritual correctness, as long as they work. This means that they come to mind when you need them, when you need to respond to a challenge or make a choice at a crossroads. It means that they are playing on your inner soundtrack before you hit a select button.
When you check your inner soundtrack, you may find that your personal mantras include:
“I’m sick.”
“I’m fat.”
“I’ll never meet the right guy.”
“I’ll never have enough money.”
There’s no need for me to expand the list. You want to make your own. When you detect a negative mantra of this kind on your inner playlist, you can try to delete it, but may find that it comes back. You can try to override it with happy tunes and feel-good affirmations. I find that sometimes the best tactic is not to try to cancel a long-playing blues number right away, but to trip lightly around it, saying and singing better numbers.
Walking my dog in the park one morning, I checked my inner soundtrack and found I was engaged in making an inventory of the complaints in my aging body, all featuring pain. The pain in my dodgy knee, the pain in my shoulder, the pain of inflammation in one of my toes, the possible beginnings of a sore throat.
I hit my inner pause button. I did not try to deny that my body was expressing these complaints, and might need to be acknowledged. We don’t want to push away what may be part of our body wisdom, or — in my case — my body crying out for a little TLC. All I did was shift my attention to the dappled light among the beech trees, the gentle breeze stirring the surface of the lake and playing with my hair, the happiness of my little dog as he nosed after new smells and the nether parts of other dogs. And I said to the wind and the sun and the trees, “Thank you. Thank you for the gift of this day, for being able to walk among trees, by water, with a dog who loves me no matter what. Thank you for the gifts and the challenges of this lifetime.”
The best answer to inner naysayers and whiners may be to say to the universe: Thank you.
Text adapted from Sidewalk Oracles: Playing with Signs, Symbols and Synchronicity in Everyday Life by Robert Moss.Published by New World Library.
1 comment:
Thanks for the great post... attitude is so important! Each day I affirm the 5 Reiki precepts that start with, "Just for today..." This way each day I choose to not to worry, nor be angry, to do my work honestly, to be grateful and also be kind to every living thing. For me, starting the day with these positive intentions gets me pointed in the right direction. Bob Smithe (Facebook name).
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