During this time when the days grow shorter and the world is in a state of great change, it’s more important than ever to train ourselves to focus on what is most meaningful for us.

Although we all have personal problems and challenges, we are bigger than they are, and there is always a way forward. In my course, Follow Your Creative Spirit, I speak of contacting the source of guidance that each of us is born with.

Many spiritual teachings say that things are more than we think they are, that we are more than we think we are! They say that this world is an intrinsic part of a deeper reality that has many levels, and help is always available to us when we call for it.

Although we may be tempted to shut down, it is only by opening more fully that we can expand and become more fully who we really are. We need to fine tune our senses: listen, touch, see, hear, feel what is in our surroundings and what is within.

In the Zohar, an important source of Jewish mystical thought known as Kabbalah, it is said that “there is no stirring above, until there is stirring below.”

Try this:

Pay more attention to the sounds around you

Notice your body, how your feet feel on the ground or wherever they are resting, your seat on the chair, the space between your eyebrows.

Let your vision expand to take in more than what you are looking at. See what you notice to the right and the left without moving your eyes in those directions.

You are more than you think you are, and if you remember to take a few moments throughout the day to reconnect with your body and surroundings, you will expand your ability to focus, to receive guidance, and to feel more calm and grounded as well.

“The language of soul lives at the edges of thought, or behind it…it does not matter that we are unable to grasp it with our minds because another part of us is touched.” —Rabbi David Cooper