I think my favorite time of year is this week in between Christmas and New Year’s. The hectic Christmas craziness is over and things slow down for a few days. The Solstice has just passed here in the northern hemisphere. There is the knowing that the light is returning, yet the nights are still long and cold.
It is time for warm tea, hot toddies, reflection and dreaming.
I’m not much into formal year in review assessing nor am I huge fan of New Year’s resolutions. For many these rituals are fun and useful, for me they trigger gremlinly voices of short comings and urgency to fix what is wrong.
And yet, I am pulled to reflect on where I am, and honor what has passed. Not in a grand significant way, more from a space of general musing, a soft focus, dreamy meandering though the past 12 months.
In the next couple of weeks I will do more concrete planing and visioning for the year, but right now I am sinking into this liminal space between the years, letting the magic of the pause between ending and beginning cast its spell.
May you find moments of pause this week to let in the magic that is forming in your life.
Quan Yin reminds us of our deserving of compassion
Have you ever felt like you have messed it all up? That you have made the wrong choices, settled for less, let your fear get the best of you?
Oh, it is so hard. Painful. Embarrassing. It makes you want to hide in a hole, or least hole up in your house watching an America’s Next Top Model marathon convincing yourself it is a profound sociological experiment. (Oh wait, maybe that is just me.)
It is hard to run head first into your own human faults and miss-steps. Those places were you slip into small, petty behavior, don’t give the benefit of the doubt, say something that causes unnecessary pain or are just plain mean.
Maybe you try and justify it but your gut knows the truth.
All of this is part of being human. No matter how much spiritual, self development work you have done. As much as you want to always come from your best, express the light of who you are, sometimes you mess up. You fall short. You screw it up. Sometimes in a really big, ugly way. A way that has consequences. A way that maybe we can not fully fix.
It sucks. It hurts. It can bring you to your knees.
It stings so bad you think that your heart must be ripped wide open and desert’s worth of salt is being shoveled in.
There is responsibility to take, apologies to make, repairs to be done.
There is remorse to feel. Karmic lessons to be learned. Insights to be gained. Growth to allow.
And even though you may feel you are the least deserving of compassion and care, you are actually in most need of and fully deserving of it. From yourself. Be tender in your words to yourself, loving in your attention, respectful of your pain. Be attentive to having your process be healing., not punishing or numbing.
I know this may be the hardest part of all, extending loving compassion and healing actions to yourself when you are feeling so bad about yourself, but do it. Just do it. It will transform you and free you from what otherwise is a prison of regret and shame.
Forgive yourself for messing up. For settling. Being mean. Doing it wrong in all the worst ways.
And then let it go.
Because no matter how bad it is, it is never, ever, never the whole truth about you. Maybe not everyone will see that, but you have got to know it about yourself. Those who love you know it. Let them help.
If you don’t let your mistakes retreat into the past, if you keep them alive as proof that you are not good or worthy, than you give your mistakes, your human imperfection that every single person breathing on this earth has in their unique way, the power to hold your light hostage.
Your light is not a function of your being perfect. It is the divinity and the wisdom of your heart expressing itself. When you hold on to hurt and self judgment you restrict how that light can flow.
It is never the actual mistakes we make that cause us the most pain. It is how we deal with ourselves around those mistakes.
How do I know? Experience. Lots. We all get so many opportunities to dance with our imperfection and how it rubs up against the world around us.
If we are attentive and loving with ourselves the painful mess ups hone our spirit, increase our compassion and empathy, actually sand down the harshness of our judging reactions and scarcity fears.
We, You, become more filled with light, more wise, more honest in the world, more at home in our skin and heart.
Please leave me a comment and let me know your thoughts. What works for you when you are in need of some self-forgiveness?
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the States. If we are lucky it is a day where we slow down, enjoy family, friends, and soul nourishing food. (FYI, I wholeheartedly believe that the second, or more!, helpings of potatoes and pie enjoyed in the space celebration and love nourish us more deeply than we know, so savor well!)
It is a time to bring awareness to all the ways in which we are blessed and loved.
Here is my Thanksgiving wish for you. That in the midst of celebrating in what ever way you do, whether with a large group of loved ones or alone (because sometimes we are alone and that is okay) or working so that the rest of us can be home, I want you to take some time to be thankful for You. This is especially important if your holiday is the kind where old triggers, resentments or family drama predictably play out.
You matter, You are important, You are a gift.
You, in all your beauty and imperfection. You, for the way you wake up and choose over and over and over in the course of a day to move forward, handle what is in front of you and love what matters.
You, for the way you don’t always get it right but keep trying and growing anyway.
There is so much to be thankful for. From the way your heart beats and keeps the biological rhythm of your life moving, to the way your heart spiritually expands in love every time it heals form a hurt or extends its love to another. From the way you dream even when disappointment tempts you to stop, to the way you respond in generosity even when it is inconvenient and for no other reason than you care.
I know it can be hard to see sometimes, the way you are amazing and special. We are not that practiced at seeing, let alone expressing thankfulness for ourselves. But do it, try it. I know it is vulnerable and can feel awkward but it will open you up to your life an amazing and honest way.
I deeply want this for you. To know the intimate joy of receiving yourself, acknowledging yourself, You feeling thankful for You.
Please share with someone who deserves some self thankfulness.
May you have a wonderful, warm, abundant Thanksgiving!
You know you are beautiful. Right? You must because it shines so warm and clear.
If you have forgotten I will remind you.
It’s okay to forget, we all do, just know how important it is to remember.
You are beautiful.
I’m not talking about beauty in a fashion magazine way or hip celebrity way. I’m not talking about the born pretty way of beauty.
These are wonderful and you may possess them.
What I see in you is different.
The true beauty that you are, the sacred beauty you hold, draws me in and keeps me engaged. It opens me to the vast mystery of the divine unfolding rightness of life.
This is your beauty.
It is how you let yourself love what you love.
How you take care of what needs caring.
It is how you let yourself ride the waves of disappointment when things don’t work out.
How you sink into loss you feel might just forever break you, but you slowly allow love buoy you, save you, pull you more wholly (and holy) into yourself.
Even when you don’t your beauty doesn’t fade.
When you resist what you love because it seems too much.
When you ignore what needs your care because you are tired or hurt or don’t have the care to give.
When the loss of what was dear overwhelms you and you block love because to fully feel it would shatter you so completely you think you wouldn’t survive, so feeling broken feels safer.
Here you are beautiful too.
As you are. Walking your journey though life.
You see, being beautiful has no requirements. You came into the world with it, you will leave with it. It is the Universe singing though you with every breathe your lungs push out into the world.
You have no choice but to be an expression of the mystical choir of devotion that allows the world to dance.
Your part is to be who you are. In this moment. Only be who you are.
like light breaking though clouds, sometimes it just takes a few words to open up a new pardigm
“She’s not like our typical patient. She’s healthy.”
I heard my recovery room nurse say this to whom ever she was talking to in preparation of being transferred to a regular room.
Who me?
I was struck because the last thing I felt in that just-post-surgery moment was healthy. In fact “healthy” is not something I have felt in a long, long time.
The very large fibroid that was removed along with my uterus that was worn out from holding it, had been a drain on my energy and overall well being for at least the last 3 years. That was not the whole reason why the comment surprised me and has stayed with me this past month.
You see, if I am honest I have not felt “healthy” ever. The kind of healthy that is preached from magazine covers, news reports and the whole health and diet industry. You know, the type of healthy that comes from being the right weight and body type with the right BMI. The healthy that demands exercising in the right way, eating just the right amount and type of food with the right super nutrient of the moment. Oh, and having the right numbers for your blood pressure, cholesterol and other medical measures.
I have just never been “right” enough.I am not now or in too long to remember, the “right” weight. I don’t eat my veggies like I should and exercise is, for the most part what I have punished myself with for being over weight, not eating enough veggies and eating too much sugar. As far as blood pressure and the rest, I’ve been pretty okay in that area although I do get the raised eyebrow and the you-know-you-really-should look because, you know, my weight.
Even as I spent the last two plus years working to cure my fibroid by cultivating a more healthy lifestyle, doing all the right healthy things, it didn’t make a big difference in how I felt. Except the acupuncture, that was very helpful. But, I still did not feel “healthy”. And I still had a huge fiboid.
Big personal insight. Doing healthy things does not mean feeling healthy.
“She’s not like our typical patient. She’s healthy.”
This has ushered in a paradigm shift for me. It has had me look at myself with in a bigger context. In comparison to the most of those who end up in an operating room, I’m healthy. But beyond comparing myself to those who are worse off than I am, which is just the flip side of comparing myself to news and magazine health standards, the shift here is in where I have been looking in defining health for myself.
The healthy I have been chasing is a mirage. It may look like it is just up on the horizon and is real, but in truth it shifts and changes as I try ever harder to reach it. It is an illusion in the same what that the Photoshopped models on the cover of the health magazines are.
Health is more than a set of numbers and nutrients. It is more than the cultural in look of the moment or the fad super cure all diet or food.. It is not a dress size or certain blood pressure reading.
Here are my measures of Health.
Am I happy?
Am I able to express myself in the world the way I want?
Am I loved?
Am I giving love?
I can guarantee that if any of these questions is answered with too deep of a “no” for too long of a time, my health will not be good. I will binge, deprive, obsess in ways that do not serve me. It will show up in tests and measures at my doctor’s office.
So I focus my attention and energy on my happiness, expression and love. It is the secret, my secret, to health.
“She’s not like our typical patient. She’s healthy.”
I can’t speak for this nurse’s other patients, but at that moment, groggy from anesthesia and uncomfortable, I got a clear inkling of my true health. I was safe with a team of people tending to me with concern and kindness. My husband was by my side holding my hand. I was able to laugh at the size of what had been removed with relief and gratitude.
In the past month my feeling of health has grown in new and wonderful ways. I am still far from 100% recovered from my surgery, but I am happy in a way I was not before. Sure I can’t push myself hard all day just yet, but that is a good thing. I can see evidence each day of my body healing, my spirit lifting and my heart opening.
What is true that whether I like it our not she is.
Always has.
I am now willing to accept that she has the better way.
This body, her imperfect perfection, is my carrier though this physical world. She holds every beauty, every trauma.
She is my gateway to the unseen mysteries of the sacred. Through her I can sense into worlds beyond this one, love beyond measure, magic.
How can one not be anything less than amazed and devotional?
And yet I often am, to a punishing degree.
We are taught to fight against our physical self, trying to make her something she was never meant to be. An exact number number on the scale, a desired clothing size, a certain shape . We are in a battle of more here, less there, different.
My response to my body’s need for help has too often been annoyance, disappointment, anger, blame, shame.
I want it to be different. I want my response to my body to be loving, joyous, respectful.
I want to allow her to bring to me everything my life has to offer.
I want to receive her.
Always, not just when it is easy.
How do I take Holy Reverence to the deepest level of my physical Self?
How do I, do we, set down the programed way of being, reinforced everywhere, that our bodies are not enough? That they are flawed, must be fixed, changed and hidden? Or that they must be exploited, pushed, stretched beyond health to prove we are worthy?
I have some ideas, I have some ways I know work.
But really, all I need to do is listen. Listen to the whispers of my body. Learn the language of her symptoms and her pleasures. It is all Divine communication.
I am deepening into a kinder way, a more effective way of being with this amazing, perfectly imperfect, my-one-and-only body.
Hallelujah and Amen.
Can you relate? What are your thought? Please leave a comment, I would love to know.
