It’s raining and foggy today. I could be depressed, but my spirit is not depressed and so the weather outside is not having the effect on me that it might once have had, when I was clinically depressed. Back then the weather would have made me feel even more lifeless and given me a good excuse to stay in, vegetate, and feel sorry for myself. Today I take it in stride, knowing that the outside weather will nurture me in some necessary way, perhaps not clearly revealed until later in the day. I am certain that my spirit and my own nature will find the appropriate alignment that will lead to this nurturance.

Why is it raining? Nature says it’s time for rain. The conditions outside—cloud cover, temperature, humidity, etc.—produce fog, everything working together to produce this grey and rainy morning. We might look outside and wish for some sun perhaps. What we get, however, is nature saying, “no, I need the rain and everything is set up for rain to happen so this is what you are getting today.” This is the spirit of nature, nature and spirit as one, creating appropriate conditions for the planet.

Sometimes nature produces extreme weather conditions, fires, volcanic eruptions, melting ice caps, flooding rivers. Sometimes nature produces aberrant behaviors in human beings, rapists, murderers, terrorists. I can only surmise that nature knows what it is doing, that all of these extreme and seemingly destructive elements and events are actually necessary correctives. I trust nature. I know I cannot control it, but I can study the lessons it seeks to teach me.

We have similar goings on inside ourselves all the time, our nature and spirit work as one too, producing exactly the conditions that we need at this time in our lives. Sometimes the conditions within our bodies are extreme too, such as catastrophic illness, accident, or unexpected deeply emotional situations that send us spinning. Perhaps we also have a terrorist inside us, seeking to rout out some aspect of ourselves that we have not acknowledged or cared to deal with.

How we react to what is going on, both outside and inside ourselves, will tell us a lot about how in alignment we are with our own nature and spirit. Do we ignore the real reasons behind our challenges? Do we pull up our usual defenses, shift right into our ingrained habits and behaviors, the things we normally latch onto when we don’t want to face what is actually happening in our lives? On the other hand, we can turn inward and ask our own spirit and our own nature to come forth and communicate, to tell us the truth, to show us what is really going on.

We can take a scientific approach as well as a psychological approach to any situation we find ourselves in. In fact, viewing a situation from all sides is pragmatic, so that we have all the information we need to make a good, healthy decision for ourselves. Facts might be presented that explain what we are dealing with, alternative approaches to healing suggested, imperatives presented, but then it is up to us to go deeper into what is happening to us, if at all possible to invite our own nature and our own spirit to weigh in. Often, if we are to not only alleviate but fully resolve our inner conditions, we have to go beyond the facts and venture into feelings and emotions, and confront the deeper issues and circumstances of our inner psychological and spiritual makeup that produce our outer symptoms.

For instance, if I’m depressed, my nature and spirit are telling me there is a reason, that it’s time perhaps to go deeper into old feelings about myself that need to be attended to. I take the view that my physical body is my personal planet, and in knowing that my spirit resides in my body I understand that they are one unit. This body unit is my personal “Nature.” Just like the nature of the planet outside of me they are always in agreement, constantly working together to alert me to my deeper issues, offering me the guidance I need to heal my mind and body so that I may take my place in a new and brighter world.

It’s sometimes easier to look outside of us and see how other people are in conflict with their own nature and spirit, but much harder to see it in ourselves. It’s much easier to look to the earth and see how we humans have been, for centuries, slowly destroying the planet we live on, but much harder to realize that what is outside is only a reflection of what is going on inside and that we personally are as responsible as anyone. It’s so easy to blame others, to rant about what they have done to us. It’s so easy to point out how others are so greedy and feel so entitled to take and to destroy. We are above it all, we say, but the world around us is telling us that we are all responsible for the state the world and the planet are in now, just as we are responsible for our own bodies and spirits.

As the rain pattered outside this morning, Chuck and I sat and spoke about our dreams and what we had been reading. The conversation came around to how to begin a process of healing that is practical, offering the most basic of principles: Change our thoughts; change our personal world. Yes, thoughts do have power, a lot of power. Negative thoughts powerfully effect us negatively. Positive thoughts have powerfully positive effect upon us.

Our thoughts set up our natural environment. They bring us rain and fog, or they bring us sunshine. If we say that we are sick, then we will be sick and we must take full responsibility for feeling sick. If we say that we feel great, we must take full responsibility for feeling great too. No one else, outside of us, has the responsibility or the ability to fix us or heal us. Just as we are all on our own journeys—responsible for all the decisions we make in our lives, offered the opportunity to take what happens to us to new levels of growth and understanding—so are we responsible for our own thoughts. And beyond that we are equally responsible for our own healing.

If we have negative thoughts running through our head we should pay attention to them. They are there for a good reason. They are our spirit alerting us to them, asking us to question if they are really true, hounding us to let them go. We will not be left alone until we do. We will suffer depression and inadequacies until we feed our nature and our spirit some healthier alternatives. This is how our nature and our spirit are in alignment.

Are we polluting ourselves the same way we pollute the earth? Are we taking too much, giving too much, overdoing, thinking negatively? How are we using our power? Where are we out of balance in our own lives and what can we do to correct the imbalances?

It’s not really that hard to take the first steps in a healthy direction. But it takes a commitment to really taking up the challenges that are imposed upon us as we face what we need for healing. To bring our own personal planet into alignment we must let our own nature, our spirit and our body, drive us to the necessary balance.

The world outside of us is the perfect environment for our inner process to grow and evolve; as within, so without. In gaining inner balance, outer balance will also be achieved and our lives will advance. A rainy day will not be depressing, but the perfectly necessary environment that it truly is.

Enjoying the fog,
Jan