The Word of the Week Chapter 9 is about Search and the opening had a quote I’d like to share:
“How many times a week…a day…do you use search?” and continues by indicating we get into a habit of searching outside of ourselves, instead of within. We have our own inner search engine, our inner guidance that may be divinely led, with a reminder even that, does need occasional “tune-up”.
I use search all day, every day. Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing and Alexa all on a regular basis. If not on my computer, then my cell phone or my Alexa and Google Home devices. This is even more so the case since I have been writing almost every day. I’m sure my search frequency has multiplied significantly because of my blog writing. My most frequent search is actually for synonyms whenever I do a post since when I write my drafts, I repeat the usage of some words a lot which can break the flow of my writing. Even though I have a pretty good vocabulary, I resort to searching online for synonyms because it saves me time. It would taking longer for me to try to think of them on my own and time is a precious commodity that I want to create more of instead of wasting it searching for another way to say something. This is one area I have the habit of searching outside myself even though I am capable to search within. When I’m doing a blog post on Astrology, Feng Shui, Numerology, Meditations, Spiritual Practices, etc. I am doing a ton of searching, often for almost a full day, because I like to research the topic through several sources until I have a good enough understanding to confidently write about it.
The first directive of the chapter is to “Search for hunger” because if you are feeling hungry, it means you are running low on something and need to fill yourself back up. And to be clear, the author is not talking about the physical hunger pangs you feel in your stomach when you need something to eat, but rather anything you define for yourself. There is one area I tend to feel hunger around, though it is not something that I have ever described as hunger per say, and that is expressing myself creatively. If it has been a long time since I did any creative activity, I would find myself increasingly becoming frustrated, anxious, and more irritable. This was the case for most of 2021 and the first half of 2022. Now that I have been hyper-focused on writing often, I feel that has shifted for me. However, I have been feeling frustrated around my writing, but for a different reason. It is around the fact that I want to spend even more time writing, coming up with new ideas of things I want to write about on a weekly basis. Not being able to spend as much time on writing has resulted with me consistently having many more drafts than published posts and that doesn’t feel good to me.
It is also coupled with a frustration of not doing other creative activities, because there are a ton of other things I love to do outside of writing, such as crafting, which encompasses various interests. Later in the chapter, is this following sentence: “Embrace your creativity as your power to create your world and your life experience.” If I had all the time in the world, I would spend a majority of my time on creative outlets, such as creating handmade cards, building furniture, using my Cricut machine to do all sorts of customized things from clothing to Christmas ornaments and making potions with my essential oils. On top of that, there are other creative hobbies that I would love to learn, try and get into, such as painting dot mandalas, photography and learning how to use resin because I would love to make a resin top table or bar top one day. I know I have the power to create my own world and life, yet I am spending a majority of my time not doing the things that I really want to do.
The next thing the chapter instructs, is to “Search for contentment”, appreciating it when you find it, but keeping in mind that it is a fleeting moment because we are not meant to remain static and instead continue to strive for something different, something better. For the longest time, I was searching for happiness in my life, but looking back now, I realize I wasn’t really searching after all. I say this because I was not doing much to actively strive for anything else. I was doing the same thing day in and day out, expecting or hoping for something to change that would bring me happiness. Maybe I was waiting for something miraculous to drop into my lap to change my life, regardless, I see now why I felt so dissatisfied within. I was not doing anything substantial to change my circumstances or my life.
That being said there is one aspect of my life where I did search for contentment and gave it all that I had. It was the period I began to travel, literally searching the world for that feeling, flying off to one destination after another, month after month and sometimes week after week. At the time, the mere act of going somewhere else, away from home brought me happiness, which I realize with my Numerology knowledge, why I may have been so inclined not to want to be home to begin with. But that was likely the first time in my life I put in a lot of effort and took actions regularly for what I wanted for myself. Now, I don’t have the same desire to be such a jet-setter, because my priorities have shifted and I now seek the stability of spending night after night writing and working on my spiritual practices in the comfort of my home. Though with all the negative Feng Shui energies in my home, I probably should spend a lot more time outside of it!
Then the book advises to “Search for what you want vs. what you need” all to, from what I interpreted, avoid having regrets. This is something that I want to spend more time thinking about because I can’t figure out how this is feasible on a greater scale. I do need what I need and don’t necessarily need what I want so of course I lean towards the needful things. To put this into context, I’ll go back to my description of wanting to spend my time on creative pursuits, but in actuality I am spending a majority of every day on doing what I need to do, which is my job, my source of income that allows me to pay for having a roof over my head, meals to eat and travelling. If I sought out to spend my time on doing the things I wanted instead of what I needed to do, I imagine my life will end up in ruins. Let’s say starting tomorrow, I decide to not show up to work and simply write, paint, or other creative hobby and continued doing this day after day, then I’d get fired from my job and without income at some point I’d get evicted from my home and not have money to buy food to eat. Instead, I work my day job and spend my evenings and weekends writing because that is when I have been able to find time to work on the things I want, so I get a daily dose of doing something I want instead of only doing things I need to.
As if knowing my internal struggles, the author continues the chapter with, “Search the inner dialogue. Actively replace judgmental or critical thoughts with compassionate ones.” I know I am way too hard on myself. The words that come across my mind are not ones that I would ever say out loud to another person because it would be uncalled for with how harsh it is. Yet I have continued to berate myself in a way that I would never even consider doing to others. I know that has to change and is something I continue to work on.
The next one makes me think of my Numerology: Angel Number blog series: “Search for signs. They are all around when you open your eyes to them.” Once I had learned about repetitive numbers being signs from Angels or God, I couldn’t stop myself from seeing them all over the place! I have also begun asking my higher power to send me other non-numerical signs for confirmation, such as showing me a white feather at some point throughout the day. While I don’t always get the sign I’m asking for, there has been more than one occasion that I have actually found a white feather stuck on the windshield or on the floormat of my car, which is incredible to me. I would recommend trying this one for yourself and take this as a reminder to ask for other signs since it has been months since I’ve asked for one.
I like the next reminder, which is “Search yourself…with curiosity to know, uncover, and create peace. Meditate. See what surfaces. There is a reason we are called human beings, and not human-doings.” I started meditation with the intention of increasing my intuition. Then when I was diagnosed with high blood pressure, my doctor prescribed meditation to help me reduce it. As I began doing it daily, I started to notice the effects it had with getting deeper into myself, helping me heal and creating more inner peace. When I get so busy that I end up not meditating daily, I feel imbalanced because I miss that time to focus and work on myself, which helps bring me back to making time for it, even if that results in getting less sleep when I am already a bit sleep deprived. At some point, I hope to create even more mediations for myself since I much prefer customizing them to my own preferences, especially when I have specific goals, like when I did to increase my intuition or dive into my passions. I also do have a goal of trying my hand at mixing my story-writing skills with meditation to see if I can write a meditative story one day, but I am probably not going to attempt that until after I launch my story telling podcast.
Lastly, the chapter ends with “Search for the purpose…Don’t hold yourself to perfection.” This is one that I struggle to balance when it comes to writing my blog posts. On one hand, I am trying to achieve my Bucket List goal of writing 111 posts in 2022. Because I failed to write the first half of the year, I am left with achieving the goal only by publishing one blog post a day for the rest of the year. This is quite the challenge because I have also made it a goal to do my soul searching, learning to love myself, finding my passion and purpose in life through writing my blog posts which requires me to be very mindful and action oriented while taking my writing to a whole different level than it used to be. I am a perfectionist naturally and have, over the years, tried to break myself of that habit because I realize how much time I waste attempting to achieve that with everything I do. Expressing my deepest self is a challenge in itself and takes me a whole lot longer to write in that way than if I were simply doing a blog about a recipe I tried. I could probably publish five recipe blog posts in the same time it took me to write this single one, but I don’t necessarily want to take the easy way out of achieving my numeric goal. It doesn’t do me that much good in working towards my spiritual journey and that is what is more important. As an example, this blog post has taken me over five hours to write. I often end up spending at least a couple hours proofreading and editing before I finalize it all the while trying to keep in mind, that the goal is for me to dig deeper into myself than I am comfortable with and really trying to determine what it is I am thinking and feeling and why I am thinking and feeling the way I am. Which leads me to the way the chapter ends. It says, “Go one level deeper. And, above all, take responsibility for how you feel.” I know with my WOTW blog posts, I have been doing just that.
GGibberish 