I had a conversation with a friend yesterday wherein she asked me if I had recently spoken with a mutual friend. I answered, “No, I haven’t seen him online.” As soon as I said that, I realized it was the ‘Small-of-It.’ My response wasn’t a lie, I hadn’t seen him online, but there was something much more important behind my actions that a quirk of opportunity. I hadn’t spoken with our mutual friend in a while because our last conversation was painful and I wasn’t interested in deepening that friendship as a result. That was the ‘Large-of-It.’

One could argue that my answer was politic. I would agree. One could argue that I had a right to keep things close to the vest if I chose to. I would agree with that as well. And yet, my response caused me to pause; gave me an opportunity to think about how I chose to present myself to the world.

The question I pondered was this: When does giving the small-of-it to the world make ME smaller?

I began to see that responding to the world with the small-of-it can be insidious. It can begin to feel as if everything we have, everything we are internally, is too much for the world. The small-of-it response can prompt us into fear; into believing the world will knock us down or cause us pain if we dare to present the large-of-it. It can permeate our thinking and cause us to pull away from the spark of light that we truly are. Fostering the small-of-it response can overtake our creative processes and effect our visioning. We can begin to see ourselves as having no alternative but to BE the small-of-it in ALL areas of life.

See now that the small-of-it may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth, and may not even be the better part of the truth. The large-of-it carries weight, has more importance, and therefore adds power to our vision of what we want out of life.

So this week, ask yourself this: Do I respond to life with the small-of-it, instead of the large-of-it? Are there ways in which I can begin to live the large-of-it, without fear of the consequences? Instead, am I ready to give credence to that which makes me larger?

Many people are plagued with barriers. Barriers to love, barriers to happiness, barriers to freedom of one kind or another. And they fight; banging against these barriers in an attempt to break them down forcefully.

But what if the barriers are merely a miss-perception? What if these so called barriers do not even exist?

If you are fighting against perceived barriers, consider that you might be fighting with nothing. That your energy might actually be wasted; perpetuating a state that keeps you standing in one place without forward movement.

Consider that the fight and the barrier are intertwined; one cannot exist without the other. Let go of one and the other might fall showing itself to be empty and without solidity.

Give some thought to discontinuing the fight. Rather than breaking through barriers with force, change your perception, and they might just simply vanish!

This week find one barrier you perceive in your life and turn your thinking around. Let it show itself for the emptiness it really is and see through it. On the other side of every perceived barrier is a world full of promise!