Years ago, while sitting in the pitch-black darkness and heat of a sweat lodge, a friend and teacher of mine said something that has stuck with me all these years. He said…

“In life, if you don’t pay attention, you’ll pay with pain.”

I didn’t fully understand it at the time, but something about this statement hit me hard.

As the years went by and the intensity of my own spiritual unfolding increased, it started to become crystal clear what this wise teacher was sharing with me in that moment.

You see, in every moment of our lives, Wisdom is present. It’s innate. It’s within everyone and everything.

Wisdom is always here and now, guiding our lives (whether we’re aware of this or not).

However, most of us are drowning it out with the worrisome, fearful and judgmental noise of our habitual thinking.

We drown it out with the “news of the day”, the memories and pains of yesterday, and the worries and fears of tomorrow.

This is simply to say: When we’re not present to what is actually here right now, or another way to say this is, when we’re busy hallucinating and creating things via our imagination that are not actually here right now in this moment, we’re not listening or noticing what is.

We could encapsulate this relationship with Wisdom in one word…

Oversight.

Oversight is the unintentional failure to notice or do something which usually results from the lack of paying attention.

When we’re not paying attention to what is actually here right now, which has the quality of Presence, Peace and Awareness, we’re usually in the la-la land of our thinking.

If I were to paint a picture of how most of us are living our lives, it would look kinda like this:

We’re driving down the road of life with our eyes fixated on the rear-view mirror while listening to someone else’s version of reality on the radio! Is it any wonder why we’re having a hard time hearing the GPS telling us where to turn, when to turn and when to stop? Is it any wonder why so many of us get into “accidents” when we’re driving our “vehicles” in this way?

Oversight, not paying attention, tends to bring some form of pain with it. This pain isn’t necessarily a “bad” thing. In fact, it’s another expression of your Wisdom in action!

Often times, the pain we’re experiencing in our lives is our Wisdom giving us the “hard nudge” we need sometimes to startle us out of our slumber and start paying attention.

But, you know, it’s become clear to me in my life and work with clients that we don’t have to learn through pain as often as we do. Believe it or not, there is another way to learn the lessons that Life has in store for us that brings with it more clarity, fulfillment and ease.

The opposite of Oversight (which is learning via pain) is Insight.

Insight is what you get when you’re listening to your Inner Teacher (Intuition).

Insight is Inner Vision.

You could say that Insights are the inner-packages that our Wisdom uses to deliver the lessons that we must learn to step into our next stage of evolution, development and unfolding.

Unlike the mail man, that comes once a day, Insights are knocking on the door of our minds in every moment waiting for us to open the door so they can light up our world from the inside-out.

That “opening of the door” to allow insights to come in is what we could call…

Deep Listening.

Deep Listening is Paying Attention.

To pay attention to anything means to be present with it, to “attend” to it.

When we are fully present and “attending” the present moment, we automatically become candidates for Insights and revelations. We become candidates for fresh, new thoughts and ideas that have never occurred to us before.

It’s helpful to understant that the new realities that are seeking to emerge in our lives will come forth, first, as a new thought.

These new thoughts have a distinct quality to them. In short, they feel good. It’s as if something lights up within you and you see something with new eyes. There is an innate sense of gratitude, of feeling like the Universe has your back and that you are being guided to all the perfect places, with all the perfect people, in all the perfect times.

People that are paying attention, listening deeply and living from Insight appear to others to be “lucky.”

And they are – if Luck actually stands for “Living Under Correct Knowledge”!

Here’s the thing: the capacity for Insight is built into everyone. Everyone. No exceptions.

In this very moment, we can choose let go of our limited point of view. In this very moment, we can choose to drop our fixation with the content of our thinking and simply open our minds to allow for new possibilities, new realities, new thoughts that have never occurred to us before.

Insight is the result of listening to Wisdom.

When we’re listening deeply, we enter into alignment with the harmonious flow of the Universe.

When we’re not listening, or when we’re listening to the noise of our thinking, we tend to lose touch with our spiritual nature and the wisdom that is flowing in every moment.

In Summary

Oversight leads to learning via the push of pain. This pain, although not pleasant, is Wisdom giving us the “hard nudge” we need sometimes to “course-correct”.

Insight leads to learning via the pull of our Bliss. This bliss is Wisdom as well, revealing to us what we always already have going for us in every moment to navigate our lives with ease and grace.

As spiritual teacher, Rev. Michael Beckwith, likes to say: “The Pain pushes until the Vision pulls.”

The Pain pushes until the Vision pulls. - Michael Beckwith Click To Tweet

To your joy and freedom,
Joshua

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Thank you for being here. Blessings and create a beautiful day!