A big, happy thank you! goes out to super creative and talented William Duke, who is the host of a radio show called Spiritual Solutions. He graciously invited me to be a guest on the show in December, and we had an enlightening chat indeed.
The show airs on alternate Mondays on WIOX Roxbury 91.3 FM and streams live on wioxradio.org.
Here’s the recording of the show where I was a guest:
Or the link if you prefer: https://soundcloud.com/spiritualsolutions/ryn_gargulinski
Thanks again, William! And your show’s title is so intriguing, it kicked off a whole idea pile in my head…
Spiritual Solutions as a Way of Living
Spiritual Solutions is a fabulous name of a radio show for sure. But it’s also an amazing way to live. You may have seen the following quote kicking around:
It sounds great, right? Sure does. But what the heck does it mean?
It means our conscious minds can think a problem into existence. We can analyze it, and can roll it around in our brains ad nauseum until all hours of the night.
But we can’t think our way out of it if we keep thinking about it at that same level. We have to tap into a higher, spiritual level of awareness for the solutions to come.
Does that help or just make it more confusing?
Maybe Deepak Chopra can explain it better. He outlines our three levels of awareness quite succinctly:
- Contracted Awareness: This is like being a dark room with only a tiny candle to light the way. As we trip, bumble and bump into things, EVERYTHING in the room is a problem.
- Expanded Awareness: Now you’re in the dark room with a flashlight. Former obstacles, like the couch we ran into, are now seen as useful opportunities (especially if you want to take a nap).
- Pure Awareness: The room is no longer dark. It’s streaming with sunlight and outfitted with glass walls, a glass floor and glass ceiling. The whole world is open and inviting to you. There is no need for solutions because no problems exist.
Yes, we’d all love to live in pure awareness every minute of every day. But, alas, we are human beings with long-instilled habits that often keep our thinking bumbling around with problems in the dark.
Being aware of this, however, is the first step toward changing it. We can then more easily expand our awareness as frequently as needed or desired.
Spiritual Solutions in Action
All of us have likely experienced instances where problems seemed to resolve themselves, with what seems like little or no effort on our part. Those are prime examples of spiritual solutions in action.
We may have automatically expanded our awareness and tapped into a higher level of consciousness, where solutions come as readily as rain on the Oregon coast.
So how do we tap into this higher level of consciousness? We let the problem go. Stop ruminating on it. Stop analyzing it. Stop giving it the power to keep us awake at night. We release it into the universe, then remain open for the solution to arrive.
It will sometimes come in the form of an intuition, where we’ll suddenly know what actions to take. Other times, the action will just happen. Here are a few examples from my own life that immediately come to mind:
Spiritual Fix for Overwhelm
One week a few months back when I was so overwhelmed with work that I couldn’t even see straight, I decided to surrender to the problem. I released it to the universe. That very same day, two appointments that were bogging down the schedule suddenly called to reschedule.
Spiritual Fix for Marketing
The other day I was fretting about needing some kind of guidance for marketing, as I felt like I was all over the place. I released the problem to the universe. Would you know that the first assignment on my back-to-work-after-the-holiday lineup was from a client that wanted to pay me to watch two hours of marketing videos? And that an email from a business group I belong to succinctly outlined an annual marketing plan.
Spiritual Fix for Addiction
And the big one. Drinking. No matter how badly I wanted to quit, or used my conscious-mind will power to try and stop, it was of absolutely no use. I kept drinking and drinking despite my hardest efforts in the state of contracted awareness. Nothing worked until I finally admitted defeat, surrendered, and released the problem to the universe. My obsession with alcohol was then magically lifted. I had my last drink in 1999.
So the next time you’re plagued by a problem that just won’t quit, stop thinking about it. Take a deep breath. Surrender. Let it go floating off into the universe. Then wait for the spiritual solution to come, as it ultimately will if you’ve truly let the problem go.
Spiritual Solutions in Action – Video
Spiritual Solutions in Daily Life – Podcast
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