When you open your eyes each morning, what is the first thing you see? If you wake up next to another person, do you behold them with eyes of love or derision? If an animal companion is nestled beside you, do you feel a sense of gratitude for their warm fuzziness? If you are sleeping solo, can you hold out your hand and be thankful that you can see it, feel it, move it ?  If not, find at least one other thing for which you can express appreciation.  I use an analogy when explaining how our perception shapes our reality. I wear glasses and if they are smudgy or finger-printy when I put them on, that’s how the world will look to me. If, instead, I clean them before donning them, then the world will be more likely to shine through with clarity. Simple as that.

It’s a practice, I know. Are you used to a habitual way of seeing the world, the people and the events that come along with it?

I appreciate beauty in all forms. At the moment, I am appreciating the beauty of listening to my favorite Sunday morning radio show called Sleepy Hollow on Philly based radio station WXPN (Saturday and Sunday morning) It also streams on www.xpn.org . I soak up  the beauty of the sunshine pouring in through my window. I am immersed in the beauty of ‘taking spiritual dictation’ as I type these words.  I anticipate the beauty that I know I will experience at celebration this morning at Circle of Miracles (an interfaith community of which I am a part) and that which I will know as I ‘sweat my prayers’ at the gym later today and fold laundry (yes, even laundry can be a sacred practice) and connect with friends. I will drink in beauty on this late autumn day in bucolic Bucks County, PA, as I drive on rolling hills, watching the last of the leaves take leave of their tree homes and come spiraling ground-ward.

What is beautiful to you? Are you willing to view life through the eyes of an ‘opti-mystic’?

http://youtu.be/QeK5tq0n2Ok Norah Jones

http://youtu.be/WI3oXC1401s Young Rascals