"Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror
up to where you are bravely working. Expecting the worst, you look and instead, here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see. Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birdwings." - from The Essential Rumi Coleman Barks with John Mayne
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"Breathe it all in, love it all out" - Mary Oliver
"So take a breath and find out what is unsolved in your heart. Breathe in patience, breathe in love. Love yourself bountiful & send that love out. When you send love out from the bountifulness of your own love, it reaches other people. This love is the deepest power of prayer." - John O'Donohue "One conscious breath in and out is a meditation" - Eckhart Tolle "My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless. Neither body or soul. I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know, first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being." from Only Breath by Rumi Here are some of my favourite quotes from Charlotte's Web by E.B. White, a classic children's novel written in 1952 about belonging, friendship, and the natural world.
"Wilbur didn't want food, he wanted love. He wanted a friend - someone who would play with him." E.B. White "I don't want to be perfect. I only aim to be fearless & resilient & myself" - Charlotte the Spider "Why did you do all this for me? I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you." said Wilbur the Pig.... "You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing." - Charlotte the Spider And from the Tao Te Ching (the classic Chinese text written some 2500 years ago) on friendship, belonging and transformation: "Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage." "Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power." "When I let go of who I am, I become what I might be." "Your soul knows the geography of your destiny.
Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more important, it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey." - John O'Donohue You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things. - Mary Oliver "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles by Marianne Williamson What is my life's greatest longing at this moment?
In class, we have been asking ourselves this question and outside of the classroom, we have been encouraged to tuck this question into our heart-minds as a living inquiry. Our aim is not so much about working the answer, but rather, to cultivate curiosity and openness to living the unfolding question. To facilitate a courtship with our innate, inner life impulse, Toko-Pa Turner (author of Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home) suggests that we create a Longing or Dream Altar. Dedicate a space in your home for objects (found or created) that symbolize aspects of your life's longing. Even if you haven't found anything that symbolizes your longing, Toko-Pa recommends that you place a piece of cloth in a spot in your home to create space for the longing / dream to reveal itself. Toko-Pa also believes that dreamwork offers a restorative path of true belonging to our lives and to the world. In class, we have been cultivating a "courting relationship" with our dreams, freeing ourselves from figuring out what the dreams mean, and instead, practicing being open to the mysterious and symbolic nature of dreams. Dream recall & courtship tips: - Remain still in bed upon waking and mentally rehearse the dream fragments before getting up. - Journal the content and core feeling states of the dream. - Take an integrative walk in the woods with your dream to practice remaining open to the wisdom and medicine offered in our symbolic sleeping life. As the Salt Spring Island author Toko-Pa Turner writes in her profoundly beautiful book Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home (2017) "The world has never been more connected, yet people are lonelier than ever. Whether we feel unworthy, alienated, or anxious about our place in the world - the absence of belonging is the great silent wound of our times."
Toko-Pa continues "Most people think of belonging as a mythical place, and they may spend a lifetime searching for it in vain. But what if belonging isn't a place at all? What if it's a skill...or a set of competencies that has been lost or forgotten?" Inspired by Toko-Pa's writings and her online dreamwork courses, I will be sharing with you in the 2019 winter class season some of the competencies of belonging that can "heal our wounds and restore true belonging to our lives and to the world" (Toko-Pa Turner). In the world of self-care promotion, I often hear the metaphor "put the oxygen mask on yourself first" being utilized as a guiding principle. Although the metaphor makes logical sense, I have never found it to inspire nor feel in alignment with my self-care reality.
The metaphor conjures up a stressful predicament because it is being used in a dire straits situation; the plane is about to crash so now is the time to pop that oxygen mask on yourself so that you can be conscious enough to save those around you. Self-care only during emergencies and for the good of others. Also, that word "first" in the metaphor "put the oxygen mask on yourself first" doesn't resonate. It suggests that self-care is a matter of hierarchy and performance. As in, there are going to be winners and losers at this game of self-care. So if I choose to act in a self-caring way, then I'm going to be leaving behind or neglecting others as I climb my way up the self-care ladder. The image of myself standing at the top of a ladder, with my tribe on lower rungs, feels lonely and isolating. Self-care has become confused with selfishness. To disentangle the confusion, I suggest that a new paradigm take root. Stepping off the ladder, imagine yourself inside a circle with many concentric rings. Self-care becomes a movement towards the center. Life balance becomes a contextual, organic response to relationships as we move towards and away from our centers. No judgements; no pressure; no one left behind. Just the natural ebb and flow of life. The rise and glide of our life force. Centering as oppose to climbing. Like a raindrop on the ocean's surface, we create a ripple effect from our centre. In a centering circular model, self-care becomes an honouring of our authenticity and ultimately, serves as a wave like contribution towards greater consciousness. The elder friends in my mother in-law's circle have been reading a tiny little book called
"The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter" by Margareta Magnusson. In Sweden, there is a kind of decluttering called "death cleaning" that can be "undertaken at any age or life stage, but should be done sooner rather than later, before others have to do it for you." - Margareta Magnusson. With Scandinavian humour and wisdom, the author instructs readers to "embrace minimalism" and "become more comfortable with the idea of letting go." In classes this past week, we have practiced setting the internal conditions for "minimalism" and "letting go" to take root in our lives with greater ease. |