“Everyone I see is a reflection of me. Everyone I meet is a reflection of the Divine embodied.”
This is my go-to centering phrase that I inwardly say before I embark into the wild of Whole Foods and tango through the produce with other organic kale devotees.
This is my clarifying mantra that frees me to move through the city-bustle of the holiday aisles of Target with gentle amusement and appreciative ease.
This is my life-saver of intentional words that grants me a softening of patience when I wait for my caffeine fix in line at Starbucks.
“Everyone I see is a reflection of me. Everyone I meet is a reflection of the Divine embodied.”
This internal recitation stops me from building up a mental wall of separation, spotlights any unconscious polarization, showcases my tiny, lurking judgments, and nudges me to choose again, to choose differently.
Choose connection over comparison.
Choose love over fear.
Choose grace over self-righteousness.
I fancy it like a last minute, life-affirming spell that shifts me back to center, into embodied equanimity, lifting the veil, and for a moment or two, experiencing interconnected truth.
And I need that reminder today.
Today, I am facing the important quest of purchasing …. practical shoes.
My shoes are not meant for walking. My shoes are meant to dazzle and prance.
My tennis shoes sparkle with sequins and delicate sliver laces.
My boots parade in cranberry velvet.
My sandals glimmer in golds.
My shoes are happy to rush across the improv stage or dash me away to a coffeeshop where I can gratefully curl up and collaborate with the muse.
My shoes have openly shared that trekking across desert, along the rims of the Grand Canyon or into the belly of caves is simply not in their wheelhouse. And there’s an upcoming adventure to Arizona on the horizon, and all my Sedona-whisked visions cannot quite come into view until I have practical, hiking shoes.
And so, I am here, sitting in the car awaiting a chain shoe-store to open. I’m on a forced shopping excursion. I learned in my teen years to not shop with a specific item in mind. This can lead to panicked frustration, mental block, and a spiraling breakdown in the car-ride home.
Now, I adore shopping. I revel in creatively expressing myself through dress and attire. I practice self-adornment as a form of playful reverence.
When I feel beautiful, I feel embodied. When I feel embodied, I feel beautiful. I am aligned with the sacredness of living.
And we are beautiful, unconditionally. (Our society strives to make us feel otherwise.) It’s just a little helpful and kindly supportive to have an outfit that celebrates this truth by amplifying our sacred confidence – to enjoy feeling alive in our lives. .
I don’t need a designer dress to make me feel beautiful. I feel beautiful because I resonate with the way that soft pink sweater invites me to feel – feminine, bright, lively. Qualities I already possess, and it’s lovely to have a boost in embodying and expressing them.
I prefer to shop when I feel inspired, when I am open, when I have no specific item in mind, and am just enjoying the beauty that surrounds me in local boutiques and artistically designed clothing stores.
I don’t do fast fashion (shout-out to Tiffany Haddish for making it fashionable to wear the same thing multiple times!). This way, I make purchases that are grounded. I buy clothes only when I resonate with them. This keeps consumerism and materialism in check. I’ve been wearing the same sweaters since high school. I buy well-made over cheap. I truly cherish and am grateful for my clothes, and yet, am willing to let them go, too.
And here I am. On a forced shopping excursion to find practical hiking shoes. I’ve gotten caught up in what I’ve practiced avoiding all these years …. stress shopping.
The clock hits opening time and I hop out of the car, resistant to the task ahead.
And then, and I never really know what and how this happens, these moments where grace finds me or calls for me to find myself. Perhaps it’s the muscle of practice that arises to creates space when I am distracted and close-minded.
“Everyone I see is a reflection of me. Everyone I meet is a reflection of the Divine embodied.”
I remember that I am about to walk into a store, I am about to meet up and journey along with other humans, and be in the company of their energy. As a highly sensitive person who tends to energetically enmesh, tends to take things on, tends to pick and unconsciously hold onto other people’s emotions and their moods and swings, I need to call myself back into embodied sovereignty. I practice responsibility, and am always responsible for the energy and the way I show up in the world. Walking in stressed and in resistance is a choice, and a choice that will color the way I perceive the other people around me.
I choose differently.
As I walk across the parking lot, I silently offer the words to my eyes, to my heart to my moving feet:
“Everyone I see is a reflection of me. Everyone I meet is a reflection of the Divine embodied.”
And as those words strengthen a sense of clarity around my mission, around a trust that I will get exactly what I need, I turn and see a parked car that has a Halloween skeleton in the passenger seat, staring straight back at me.
The skeleton wears sunglasses and rides shotgun, an arm slightly raised as if giving a toast.
Everyone I see is a reflection of me. Everyone I meet is a reflection of the Divine embodied, and bam … there’s the shotgun-riding skeleton beaming at me, giving me an encouraging nod.
I laugh mid-step.
I laugh in the middle of the sunny parking lot.
I laugh to break open and shake lose any lingering stress, to let the enlightened humor kindly instruct me to not take it all so seriously – from the practice of living spiritually to purchasing hiking shoes.
The fun and the funny can infuse the path with a lightness that brings us a breath-giving perspective of objectivity, of seeing ourselves and others with the loving bemusement of a benevolent, mischief-making universe.
I almost immediately found the most perfect hiking shoes, and I’ll be taking purposeful, lighthearted steps along the Grand Canyon, softly witnessing a divine reflection in everything and everyone I see along the way.
