Day After Day: A Course of Habit. {poetry}
{source}
At a young age, while attending a progressive church with my grandmother, I was introduced to the idea that our thoughts can create our experiences.
This concept was reinforced during years of weekly Sunday school and youth group activities. In my twenties, after graduating from college, I began to study this metaphysical philosophy, Science of Mind, in earnest. For six semesters, along with other spiritual teachings, we learned the principles that can be consistently applied to affect personal change, and then we practiced using them in our daily lives.
One of the main tenets that stuck with me was the Law of Attraction. With time, it became clear that any time I said or thought something like, “I am not good at blank,” “I am afraid of blank,” or “I have blank condition,” my thoughts were aligning to create or to continue those experiences in my future.
Recently, I’ve been reading a few of Joe Dispenza’s books and trying some of his meditations. Dr. Joe, as he is called, believes people can be healed by choosing different thoughts. He has been showing people for several decades how to heal themselves. According to Dispenza, a new thought can change us — neurologically, chemically, and genetically.
Competing in a triathlon in 2004, he was hit by a SUV while riding his bicycle and fractured six vertebrae in his back. After consulting with several orthopedic surgeons, he decided not to have the high-risk surgeries they recommended. Instead, he used a combination of alternative approaches, including meditation, envisioning a healthy, functioning body, and believing it was possible to heal himself.
Where thinking is concerned, we are creatures of habit. We have more than 60,000 thoughts each day, and 90 percent of those thoughts are the same ones we had the day before. So, if we want to change something in our life, it’s important to be aware of what we are thinking and change our habits.
We also often become rigid in our routines, which makes one day look much like the day before and the day to come. We wake up, shower, have coffee, start working, et cetera, until our schedules become more and more fixed.
I can relate to this. Especially during the past two pandemic years, I have found myself getting increasingly used to being at home and tied to my routine. Dispenza says shaking things up a little and trying new activities at different times can be helpful to start transforming your life, because this change creates new neural pathways.
This makes sense to me, and it has been on my mind, which led me to write this poem.
***
Lately, I’ve been thinking
about how often I get wedged
inside the wake
of my slow-moving boat,
how many of my days
are maneuvered in much
the same trajectory
as the day before.
A ship that starts to navigate
itself, stuck on automatic pilot,
one created from habit
and comfort.
When I consider the times
I’ve really felt alive,
they were when I sailed
past charted sites,
stepped out on a plank
over a deep abyss,
then dove into the unsettled
waters of the unknown.
***
Carolyn Chilton Casas is a Reiki Master and teacher. Her stories and poems have appeared in Braided Way, Energy, A Network for Grateful Living, Reiki News Magazine, Touch, and in other publications. You can read more of Carolyn’s work on Instagram or in her first collection of poems titled Our Shared Breath.
***
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