Outside the Box, Ed P – Spiritual Art

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Outside the Box

With this picture, Outside the Box, I hope you’ll find some inspiration to help you step outside whatever box you feel is holding you back.

Outside the Physical Box Physical Box
The green bushy box represents our physical world, the first box we escape from. Once we become aware that we are more than our physical body we begin to realise there is more to life.

Emotional Box
We then come to getting outside the box of emotions. It can be a difficult and tedious effort to try to tame our emotions. They can get us into situations over which we seem to have no control. Our emotions take over and we run riot, like a bull in a china shop, causing damage all around us. One of the keys to controlling our emotions is selecting the memories we bring to mind in different situations. If we can replace our strong emotional memories with calmer ones we can begin to control our emotions bit by bit.

Outside the Memory Box

Box of Memories
Our box of memories can be a wonderful treasure trove of information, skills, experiences and teachings. If we can access the right memories at the appropriate time we begin to take more control of our lives. We can also be selective as to what memories we keep in mind and what we tend to forget. If we can keep the more positive memories to the fore we will generally have a more positive outlook on life.

Outside the Mind Box

Mind this Box
Our next box we have to deal with is our mind. When we speak of ‘outside the box thinking’ it is the mind box we are talking of. To get outside this box can be difficult as the mind is a very strong and dominant part of us. It uses logic as its main method of organising things which can be pretty convincing. The mind also sets things into sequences which seem to make life ‘easy’ for us to handle.

Examples of these sequences would include our daily routines of getting up and going to work or doing chores. Our opinions are another form of sequences. If we see a guy wearing a leather jacket, jeans and carrying a guitar we form an opinion in our mind about that person just from the visual information we see.

Change your Mind
Change is a thing our mind doesn’t like. If you find yourself resisting changes in your life, your mind may be running a lot of your life. To get outside the box of the mind can be difficult but with persistence you can do it. What we need to pay attention to is our intuition or hunches.

These hunches, inner nudges or seemingly random thoughts often come from our sub conscious. The way it works for me is like this: I have to make a decision to go somewhere. The first though that comes to mind is a route through some hills. This though comes from Soul and is fed into the sub conscious. The mind takes this idea and begins considering it. The mind than comes up with alternative routes and logical reasons as to why the other routes are better. Here are a few of the mind’s reasons: if I go around the hills it will be easier, those roads are always busy, the roads there are too narrow. I can take mind’s advice but I’d like to try out what Soul initially suggested. So I decide on going through the hills. Now it can get difficult as the mind kicks up a fuss with all its logical reasons for using its suggestions. You will have to be determined to stick with your initial hunch from Soul and not let mind rule overrule you.

Mind changing exercise
Try this out on some small decisions in your life to see if what you are getting from your sub conscious is correct. This will take time to practice and sometimes what you think is coming from Soul or the subconscious may actually be coming from mind. As we are all individual with unique ways of doing things within ourselves there may be a lot of trial and error involved before you get to point where you are confident of the source of your ideas.

For me, I try and work with the first idea that comes to mind as this is usually from Soul. When I’ve had the chance to check out the other solutions suggested by the mind I have usually found that Soul’s suggestion was the best. Soul’s suggestions usually lead to new experiences and enjoyable encounters that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. Often strange ‘coincidences’ happen when I take Soul’s advice and disregard the logic which mind produces.

The Picture
This picture Outside the Box was inspired by a competition with the same title run by the Manifesto Gallery in Waterford, Ireland. It won joint second place in the competition which I was thrilled about.

Get outside the box
I hope this helps you step outside the box, whatever box you are in at the moment.

*Ed P

Free - print your own image
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Quality Print
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