20cents Lesson

Recently I’ve been on an emotional downhill. For several months, my mind was a battlefield of conflicting thoughts. I was depressed and my productivity at work is a testament to that. Sleeping had become a struggle and daily waking up was tiring routine. I always wanted to go out. I became an impulsive buyer (the very thing I denounce). I tried to cope up with stress eating. Playing badminton had been a sigh of relief. A bit of jog makes me forget, at least for a while.

I will not put into detail as to what had happened, but I’ll try to put into words the gems hidden on that experience.

The Struggle

It’s not the thing that happened that caused the struggle, It’s my response to it. It’s how I orchestrated and conceived the problem that caused the problem. I dwelled too much on the “what if’s”, “if only’s”, and “why’s”. If one have invested time, energy, and have built dreams around a desire, you can just imagine how frustrated one can become if life throws a different game.

But the universe always has something superb for us. I sense the love and favor of God when He gave me two mentors (I consider them mentors who help me grow in maturity). During the struggle, I was comforted by two wonderful ladies. They have strongly different character one is soft, caring, and gentle while the other is tough, frank, and choleric. They are two opposing sides of a pole, but their message is the same. It’s like a wisdom being observed from two different lenses. One is under a tough love and the other is from a caring form of love.

The Exercise

Let me share with you the lesson I learned by this simple exercise (I can still remember how Shai wowed me with this exercise).

Imagine yourself holding a centavo coin. Or simply get a centavo in your pocket. Try to feel the texture, you can flip it if you want. Just observe the coin, its color, the engraving details, you can even smell it if you feel so. The goal here is to focus your attention on the coin.

Now, imagine it’s a beautiful summer night and the moon is just glazing its enchanting light towards you. What would you feel? Will you not be amazed? Will you not feel a higher vibration in your heart?

This time, imagine stretching your arms towards the moon with the centavo coin on your finger. Then close your left eye while gently zooming in the coin towards your right eye. It’ll come to a point where you will no longer see the moon because the coin is clouding your vision of it.

The Lesson

The moon in that exercise is our life’s everyday blessings. It’s beautiful, majestic and enchanting. On the other hand, the centavo coin is our life’s temporary problem.

Which one do you think has a greater value?

Remember how you focused your attention on the coin?

Sometimes that is how we deal with our problems. No matter how microscopic a problem actually is, we make a substantial effort immersing ourselves in it.

In real life who’s holding that coin?

Who maneuvers that hand and made that deliberate decision to bring the coin closer and closer to your eyes?

Here’s the surprising fact. We still have a left eye that if we only chose to open, never will we take our blessings for granted – again.

That right eye? It’s a grateful heart.

One last thought

An emotional battle can be caused by different adversities. When coins took residence inside our head we became problem conscious.

The truth is we are living in a world of blessings, there was never a shortage of it. But if our vision is obstructed by coins we will never realize its abundance. Put it this way; scarcity lie’s in eyes to see, and hearts to receive, never on God’s blessing (“How to turn thoughts into passion“, by Bo Sanchez).

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