Your Inner Wow

image credit: Perla*

One of the most inspiring books I have read is Victor Frankl’s, Man’s Search for Meaning. In it he says, “Everything can be taken from a man but…the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” He helped himself and fellow prisoners at a concentration camp, to survive their sordid existence through a mental attitude of finding meaning in their existence, a spiritual domain that their captors could not destroy. When what I call the inner wow meets its nemesis the inner critic, we can choose to stay afloat by taking the path of the spiritual warrior, cutting through the lies our inner critic feeds us and choose to follow our wisdom and courage.

One day when I was doing some charcoal art work, playing with light and shadow, working from the negative space, I was so awestruck by the process; to see a picture come alive from just working with the negative space. It was an epiphany, I thought, isn’t that like when we work with the negative spaces in our minds, we can transform the darkest emotional states into life enhancing experiences? I remembered the times I did things that I was afraid of doing such as speaking in public and the feeling of exhilaration after I faced my fear and did it anyway. Marilyn Ferguson said, “Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom.”

The inner wow is what I call this experience of freedom. We feel it when we see an amazing sunset, a soaring eagle. It’s those moments when we feel the oneness of all creation, and we know that life is good. I call it the inner wow because it is from within that we experience the feeling of freedom, the outer is just a catalyst that enables us to access that space that is our true nature.

The experience of the inner wow becomes more accessible to us when we find inner peace. Inner peace comes through being accountable for our actions, through acceptance of and respect for all others, and ourselves at whatever stage we are, on the spiritual healing journey. When we choose to stop the war with others and ourselves, when we choose peace, we silence the inner critic and choose freedom.