The Big Picture: Greater Perspective

I often reference "the big picture" when I am speaking to people during Spiritual Consultations, or in my Tarot Readings. And every  now and again, a person will look at me uncertainly and ask me what I mean.

Perception being a personal and internal thing, "the big picture" can mean many different things, depending on your thought process. So I'll share with you my idea of "the big picture". Perhaps you'll see the irony in it, as I do; the big picture truly requires you to get "smaller" to really see it .

I will share my idea of the big picture through visualization, so please allow me to take you on a bit of a journey now. Relax where you are sitting reading, and take a couple of cleansing deep breaths.

Now look at your self and your life from a third person perspective. See your life from outside of yourself, as though you were looking at your environment and experiences as you would a TV character. Detach yourself, and un-bias yourself. See your life from a distance, and first begin by seeing everything directly surrounding you. See the room you sit in, in the house or apartment or flat you live in. See the other people or pets in your living environment, all going about their business, doing their own things. See your job, or school, and other daily obligations as something like branches on a tree; they are extensions of how you spend your time on a daily basis. 

Now move outwards a bit further, so that you see your house, apartment or flat in the neighborhood in which you live. See all of the other houses, buildings, parks, trees, cars and everything that take up space in your neighborhood.

Move outwards further now, and see your neighborhood in the city or town or village which you live in. See the totality of your locality; see how many people live in close proximity of each other in your area of the world, see all of the cars, and the fields, and the rivers and streams and lakes. 

Move out yet again, so that you now see your city or town in the province, or state in which you live, and then again move out to see your province or state in the country in which you live.

In your unbiased unattached perspective, see your country in relation to the oceans and seas that surround it, and the other countries which border it. Continue to widen your view to the point where you now see the entire world. 

Here you are, now looking at the Earth. And I want you to move again further out, so that the Earth becomes smaller as you move away, and eventually it becomes nothing more than a dot, and then inevitably a star shining far in the distance.

Seeing all of this widening of perspective, think back now to where you are sitting, at your computer or tablet, reading a blog article on the internet, in the room which you are sitting in. Can you truly see your life as something chaotic or dramatic when you have just previously seen life from such a bigger vantage point? You have just watched your world get incredibly small, while you watched the world grow infinitely huge.

This is seeing the big picture. Because in essence, this is the state of being; we are small individual creatures living our remote secluded lives in our tiny regions of a vast planet. And yet, the Universe goes on naturally, despite what we are experiencing from moment to moment in our emotional and physical life. The comets still move through space, as the planets still revolve around the suns, and the nebulae continue to expand in gaseous explosions of brilliant hues. The pains and pleasures you feel on a daily basis really seem to pale in comparison to the vastness of our Universe, don't they.

When life bogs you down, and you feel yourself becoming overwhelmed by it all, you can always remember the "big picture". The next time you feel yourself losing your wits at the piles of responsibilities you have, and the phone won't stop ringing, and the bills keep piling up, and you worry about how you'll afford X without sacrificing Y, catch yourself, and take a deep cleansing breath, and move outwards... look at the big picture, as you yourself become continually smaller and tinier. And remember, that long after this crisis, or this sorrow, or this upheaval passes, life will still continue to move naturally through this entire Universe.

The big picture is humbling, awe-inspiring, mysterious and peace inducing. I have shared with you elsewhere on this blog of mine that I have suffered from Panic Disorder in my past. And one of the things which helped me to overcome and cope with that panic was meditation. The thing which every meditation began with was this particular visualization exercise. To this day, if I feel myself losing my grip in the moment, I move to this visualization... and then I exhale and remember that "it isn't so bad after all". Because in such a terrific and immense Universe where everything is possible, and mysterious, and enigmatic, how can our small problems really amount to much in the grand scheme of things? This is the big picture, and it is beautiful.

With Divine Love,