Where do you draw your strength from?
Are you having difficulty finding the strength to carry on?
Feeling that what strength you do have isn’t enough to make the changes you envision for yourself and the world?
As the season changes here in the northern hemisphere, I feel both the exhilarating energy that warmer weather and sunshine offers me, and simultaneously the overwhelm.
Energy that is freeing and feels of possibilities and overwhelmed by the state of the world, the country, family life, and day-to-day routines; all which feel sped up by the change of weather.
But, I believe that there are ways in which we can ground. We can strengthen connections within and without that will serve the healing for all and help us navigate change.
We can turn the concern of situations into fire that fuels our actions. We can develop and strengthen sources of strength within ourselves for the betterment of all beings.
This is what the purpose of my latest creation is meant to build:
Source of Strength
About my new course
This course is about physical strengthening, mental strengthening, and spiritual strengthening. Or ‘Source’ of strength comes from a divine place within. As we return to sacred practices, have some fun, get to know each other, and ground, we will grow our strength from the inside out. I’ll be sharing more details on the course with an option to register next week.
“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched … but are felt in the heart.”-Helen Keller.
May this experience of my new offering be a journey that when you look back on it, gives you great strength!
Inspiration for this blog and the course:
Mark Nepo begins his entry for December 6th in his book “The Book of Awakening: having the life you want by being present to the life you have”, using the above quote by Helen Keller.
Mark Nepo goes on to write:
“There is an ancient Chinese art of painting on porcelain. It requires, more than skill and precision, a deep trust and patience in the process. It involves painting thin layers of pigment, one at a time, on the porcelain, letting each dry and soak into the porcelain itself. But even when dry, the pigment doesn’t yet reveal its color. You never know what the color will be until the porcelain is fired in the kiln–That is, until the pigment is burned into the porcelain itself.
This is remarkably like the life of questions that come from living. We use the brush of our feelings to paint our questions into our heart. But only after the fire of experience, only after our felt questions are burned by experience into our heart, only then do we see the color of truth emerge.
So there are no answers to the deeper questions of living, only the emerging colors of truth which we must find the trust and patience to live into.”
Our truths emerge from experience.
This is explicitly why I invite you into “source of strength”, as well as all of my offerings, group classes and one-on-one, retreats, journey to the peak, and more!
Using last week’s R.A.I.N. acronym from Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach:
We come to learn how taking time to reflect back on our experiences supports growth, transformation, and being able to then draw out and discern what our truths are.
*R.A.I.N. is recognition, acceptance, investigation, nurture/non-identification. You can read that blog here.
Even in the present moment upon looking back, we can also come to learn how returning to the present moment and allowing life’s flow to take place holds great wisdom as well. This trust and patience in the process holds great wisdom. This is why I chose to use the Shuni mudra, the mood draw for the planet Saturn, for our classes.
See that fun picture above with myself in the mudra and Quinn on my lap! I tried to get her in the mood, it was fun.
Shuni, Saturn, Is the Vedic astrology representation of self-discipline, karmic cycles, and patience through the process. I do not know very much of anything of Vedic Astrology, but I found this mudra to be very helpful in reminding me to just surrender into life’s flow.
You can try it now by turning your palms up and resting your hands upon your lap. Connect your middle and thumb fingertips to meet. Close your eyes or gaze towards the earth and take some nice slow steady breaths. Ground yourself in the flow of life. Have faith in your process.
As we moved through our practices in my heart I kept hearing the whisper of Rainer Maria Rilke speaking:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
How beautiful and so poetic.
We must let life flow through us. Not clinging, not pushing it away.
“The heart is the place through which energy flows to sustain you…
…To achieve this state, simply allow the experiences of life to come in and pass through your being.”
-Michael A. Singer, “The untethered soul”
All the negative and positive impressions will come up time and time again. Those impressions and feelings painted upon our heart, like the pigment on the porcelain. Those impressions can burn us like the Chinese kiln, but this is the process to live life, to live the questions, and then grow into clarity and true self.
Allow yourself, your heart, to feel. Let it flow through you. This is life.
“Learn to be centered enough to just watch this stuff come up.”-Michael A. Singer
Allow yourself to be painted by the brush strokes of life, let it paint your body, your mind, your heart, and spirit! And when you look back upon all the emerging colors of your truth, the beauty of your life, and all its ups and downs, may you be struck with awe and gratitude.
All my love,
Shawna
Breathe and Believe.