How To Be Safe

I can choose to be safe.

Everyone I know can choose to be safe.

Everyone I don’t even know, all over the planet, can choose to be safe.

------------------

That seems to be a ridiculous thing to say, that simply by choosing, I and everyone else can be safe.

But that is because I am discovering that my safety does not depend on what is going on outside and around me.

It depends on the thoughts I am giving myself from within.

This is a very new practice for me and I am still having to get better at it.

Everyday, something happens that makes me feel scared and afraid.

I decided I had to do something about it.

Since I cannot change the news or other people’s motives or other people’s business or political practices, I had to find another way to address the issue of safety.

I decided to find it from within.

I can decide how I look at things, even though I can’t change those things.

I can look at them fearfully, because of how they make me feel, or I can look at them differently.

I can look at them with pity.

I can look at them with compassion.

I can look at them with understanding.

I can look at them with forgiveness.

This completely changes my view and my experience.

Somehow, while watching or remembering something cruel, by changing my observation to pity, compassion, understanding or forgiveness, I move myself out of harm’s way.

I can’t explain it, but somehow, by becoming the observer instead of the victim or even sympathizing with the victims, I give it a different spin, and I can see that there are solutions.

By moving myself and others out of the way of the perpetrators motives, I can see all of us in another context.

It calms my thought, lets me breathe in support for all of us, and with that breath of inspiration, makes room for something better.


© 2013 Kathryn Hardage
www.InspiredPractices.com