How to elevate your mood with what you wear

What am I going to wear today?

I bet you’ve asked yourself this question many times. Probably each time you try to match what you wear with the mood you are in, or when you dress up for a particular occasion where you want to feel a certain way.

But what if you turned things around and began by choosing the quality you most wish to embody today and then look for the clothes that will anchor you in that mood throughout your day?

This is so important to practice these days when we spend so much of our time at home due to the world pandemic, and where it may seem like it doesn’t really matter what we wear. I’m here to tell you that it is super important to elevate your spirit during these very trying times, and you can do it during your daily routine of getting dressed.

Discover how the universal principle of spiritual-material unity can be expressed in a simple, doable practice, which you can do every day when you get dressed.

Elevate the mundane daily activity of getting dressed into a spiritual experience, an act of self-care, and a gateway to joyful living.

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So the focus today is about one of the staples or the essences of The Expansive teachings, which is spiritual-material unity. That is the nature of reality on planet earth. When you look at spiritual teachings, it’s not about spirituality out there in a meditation retreat, and then the material world is like the daily grind, which is boring and hard, but we have to do it to pay bills.

There is a unity between the spiritual and the material. And I want to give you a very simple example from one of my posts this week of how the nature of reality is spiritual material unity and how you can find happiness and joy in this very moment with this little exercise and tip that you can do.

So the formula for spiritual-material unity to find joy, delight, and happiness is: Pick something spiritual, express it materially in your material world, and boom. Happiness and joy. Fulfillment.

So yesterday I posted, “Express ease in what you wear today.” Very simple. Express ease, the quality of ease, in what you wear today. And so here, we’re all looking for some ease, right? We’re all looking for some tranquility, some relaxation. So pick the quality of ease. And when you go to dress yourself today or tomorrow, don’t look for clothes. Look for qualities in your clothes. What evokes ease in your clothes? You know, having a shawl creates some ease for me, some flow for me. What creates ease for you? Maybe certain colors, maybe certain textures. It’s a certain look that connects you to the quality of ease. So you don’t need to go to a retreat to experience ease. You can go into your closet in the morning and decide, ‘What quality do I want to connect to today? What spiritual quality, what emotion do I want to be tuned into,’ and then pick your clothes accordingly.

And so here we have a very mundane activity, wearing your clothes, which we have to do in the Western world. We wear clothes. And you have a retreat center with spiritual teachings. And here you have, you brought them together. Very simple, pick a quality. I picked ease this week, and dress up with a quality of ease.

And then you can touch your clothes. You can feel them. You can look yourself in the mirror throughout your day. Remember that they’re not just the fabric they are– they are the quality of ease because that’s what you picked them for and that’s what they evoke in you. And so go about your day. If you have zoom sessions, work sessions, you know, touch your clothes for just a second and go, ‘Oh yeah, ease. I chose ease today.’ And just connect to the scarf, the shawl that maybe brings more ease to you and then continue your meeting or whatever you are doing– talking to a child or to a partner or your parents or colleagues or cooking or whatever you need to do today. Wear the qualities that you want to experience. Wear them on you on your skin. Wear them today, and you will have brought a spiritual quality into a very simple mundane activity. And you will feel spiritual material unity. You will feel the sacredness of your clothes because you would have connected to ease.

And so I’ll just share a quick other post that I share today. On Wednesday, I usually share about the Expansive method, which is the four keys to spiritual material balance, which I talk about in my book, but the post today said, ‘Your senses have the power,’ your senses, your five senses, have the power, ‘to connect you with a sacred essence of what you are experiencing.’

So just like with the clothes your sight, when you look at a rose or someone you love, your sight is a bridge from the sacredness that you have. Your sight is a bridge to see the sacredness in the rose, the beauty in the rose, the scent can allow you to appreciate the sacred, magnificent scent. Like who created the scent of roses? Whoever did, is a genius. It’s ingenious.

And so here you are going the wonder and the beauty and the sacredness in the rose, as you look at it, or as you smell it, or as you speak to someone or as you taste food, that’s food from the earth, you see there’s synchronous everywhere. And our five senses are the bridge from the spiritual realm to our mundane, material, physical living. They allow us to stop and go, ‘Wow, I just felt this. I just saw this. I just heard this. And I experienced the essence of it, and I experienced the sacredness of it.’

And so that’s how simple spiritual-material unity is. And that’s how simple it is to feel fulfillment. Because if I’m going to now, I didn’t think about it when I got dressed, but this scarf definitely evokes ease for me. Now I’m going to associate the scarf or shawl with ease. And as I walk around my day, continue to do what I’m doing. I’m going to touch it, and I’m going to feel there’s a softness to it. I’m going to feel ease, and I’m going to anchor and tap into ease so quickly.

So it’s as simple as that– small practices, spiritual-material, unity, the formula is: pick something, spiritual, something emotional, either express it in what you’re doing, wear it, it see it in others, perceive it in others, and appreciate it.

So I send you blessings of ease for the rest of the day, the rest of your week, and the weekend.

Blessings of ease.