The Nature of the Inner & Outer -A Musing While Browsing Home and Earth's Decor

“We walk Earth holding ‘the goods,’ the beautiful fabric of our insides in a world of beautiful design.   Is it possible much of the bad in the world happens

because we miss the goods within and thus the good without?”

I don’t get out much at least to home décor stores, but last week a $10-off coupon arrived in the mail and I found myself in a store.  Beautiful fabric on richly colored pillows caught my eye while there.  I ultimately used the coupon for owls painted on canvas while the pillows remained.  

This week I returned to the store to stand before the wall of pillows still a feast for my insides.  I chose four then turned with pillows in hand to mix and match them on a nearby sofa. 

As I turned I happened to look up.  My breath was taken.  Across the expansive asphalt parking lot and over mall and business roof tops was the setting sun as I, a connoisseur of sunsets, had never seen it.  Hues of orange and pink clouds looked like huge angel wings in the blue and blue-green sky.  I commented to a salesclerk who joined me for awhile. 

The pillows couldn’t compare to the beauty nature provided in the then and there.  I was acutely aware that moment in my life and the sky would never be repeated.  Never again would these exact colors and angel wings appear.  I wished for my camera while knowing moments like this can never be captured. 

I then walked around pillows in hand for when I do shop I’m the customer who walks about the store holding the goods before usually returning them to the shelf or rack. 

I  browsed and found myself at the window again where the colors had intensified and glowed.  I stood leaning against the huge sheet of glass aware that Life is more like Nature than home décor.  Like life, nature is fleeting, changing moment by moment whereas our homes insides are static and only change upon redecorating. 

While decorative changes happen seasonally for some, this happens every decade or so for me.  The pillows on my sofa were bought in Colorado fifteen years ago.  The one pillow I finally held would complement them. If placed on my sofa, it would be used and walked past daily. Yet slowly and surely it would be taken for granted, taken for granted the way nature is taken for granted.  In this way, Nature is similar to my home décor - ignored. 

When ignoring happens, relationship and connection are missed be it with the stuff of our homes or the stuff of Mother Nature.  Our insides, our bodies, hearts and minds, are likewise neglected. 

I continued to lean against that store window while wondering how many people decorate their homes trying to bring the beauty of the outside in. Meanwhile we miss the beautiful moments in Nature all around because we are inside, not inside ourselves but inside cars, houses, offices. 

I wonder if we were more awake and aware within what might we realize?  What might shift if we were in relationship with our insides, the insides of own bodies, hearts and minds yet also the insides of our homes?  What would we keep? What would we pass on? What might we discover?  What might shift if we were in relationship to the outside be it the angle of the sun in the sky or the cloud shapes overhead?

I didn't capture a photo that day, but I got something much more important.  I glimpsed Earth's ever present decor through the window of a home store thanks to the window of my soul.

Days later I realize just as I walked the store with the potential goods in hand, we walk Earth holding the goods of potential, the beautiful fabric of our insides in a world of rich color, pattern and design.

Is it possible much of the bad in the world exists because we miss the goods within?

Imagine all that would Shift if we realized the beauty of really being awake, aware and alive?

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 26 January 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com