One night I dreamed about a mouse. That’s all I remembered about the dream – a mouse telling me, “One thing at a time.” Del, with his years of nature and American Indian study, shared the meaning of mouse with me. It turns out that one thing at a time is exactly what a mouse represents.
I had this lesson before.
It started with sunflower seeds. I was pulling the clothes out of our hamper when I noticed a huge pile of sunflower seeds in the bottom. I thought perhaps one of us had left the seeds in our pocket after feeding the birds.
It became clear that there was something else going on when I found seeds in Del’s shoes, and in the bin under the sink. In fact, almost anywhere there was a partially hidden container, we found sunflower seeds.
One day we discovered that we were hosting a chipmunk because he became bold enough to sit and watch us working at our desk. Obviously, he was the one who had accumulated one seed at a time until his piles of seeds became enormous.
After the mouse dream, Del bought me a tiny ceramic mouse that took up residence on my desk. I kept hearing the mouse say to me as I juggled papers, phones, people, and needs, “One thing at time.”
Sometimes I wanted to say, “That’s easy for you to say. What do you have to worry about Mr. Mouse? All you have to do is gather food, stay out of harm’s way, and snuggle with your family at home. I, on the other hand, have more to do every day than can ever be done. I have to be a master of multitasking.”
Neither the mouse nor the chipmunk seemed to buy this excuse. They continued telling me “One thing at a time.” Finally, I began to understand that they were telling me something more than how to be a better organizer.
I realized that I was seeing myself as a human with too much to do, with never enough time, patience, energy, awareness, or knowledge to get it all done. I had been seeing myself through a material perception lens. I had forgotten an important fact.
My mouse and chipmunk friends were trying to remind me to begin with the idea of One, each of us the expression and action of the One Thinker.
With their help, I remembered that shifting to a spiritual perception, dissolves the pressure of not being able to complete everything.
But, this shift cannot happen when we begin with the perception that we are human beings that can’t ever keep up, be good enough, or wise enough.
This can only happen when we begin with a perception that we are Spiritual Beings. Through a spiritual perception lens, the “One thing at a time” is the action of the One Cause and Creator.
Spiritual perception is thinking and acting from the standpoint of perfection as the baseline of our being. One-thing-at-a-time-spiritual-perception eliminates time, pressure, needs, and responsibility. It eliminates the past and the future. It eliminates judgment. It eliminates too much to do.
A human material perception produces complicated stories and will remain forever an enigma. Human material perception is never one thing at a time. It is the past, future, judgment, fear, and discouragement all at the same time. It is always too much to do.
Although when we begin with a human material perception our problems may appear to be solved, they don’t dissolve. Only spiritual perception dissolves the illusion of being separate from the One. Within spiritual perception, there is never a time crunch, only God expressed.
It’s simple. “What you (and I) perceive to be reality magnifies.™” Why not choose spiritual perception and rid ourselves of the problems of material perception.
As for me, I plan to keep Mr. Mouse on my desk to remind me, “One thing at a time and see all tasks through the lens of spiritual perception.”
BECA LEWIS coaches, teaches, writes blogs and books, plays with art, and is addicted to reading. She lives in Ohio with her husband and has kids and grandkids scattered across the country.
