Will Bloom a Flower

Thich Nhat Hahn wrote this poem in 1965 for the young people who risked their lives during war, recommending that they prepare to die without hatred. 

Here is a portion of that poem,

Recommendation

"The only thing worthy of you is compassion--

invincible, limitless, unconditional.

Hatred will never let you face

the beast in man.

One day, when you face this beast alone,

with your courage intact, your eyes kind,

untroubled

(even as no one sees them)

out of your smile

will bloom a flower.

And those who love you

will behold you

across ten thousand worlds of birth and dying."

[excerpted from Creating True Peace, Thich Nhat Hanh]

I read this today and realized that each day we choose to experience the present moment as it is, without opposing emotions, but simply experiencing our anger, our hatred, our greed, our jealousy, our sadness, our humiliation, our grieving, and allowing ourselves the full courage to face each of these 'beasts' with kind eyes and untroubled hearts, knowing that this, too, shall pass.  That this moment is but a moment and no sensation is permanent.  

So essentially, the stronger we grow ourselves to experience life, the stronger we become, the more peaceful we become.  

For example, if someone cuts us off on the highway and we feel anger, and then suppress it believing we're not spiritual or good if we feel anger, we are still not blooming flowers.  We may be creating a whole lot of compost heap under which that anger is simmering, but the anger will still be there, waiting for the next moment to upheave it.  Instead, if we allow ourselves the natural anger, and face it, and feel it.  Really feel it.  Then it dissipates, releases, relaxes back from which it came, and hence we can then slide out of that old volatile skin, and allow the newness of a smile to emerge and compassion for all beings to follow and flower.

As those young people readied for war, Thich Nhat Hahn reminded them, "Our enemy is our anger, hatred, greed, fanatacism, and discrimination.  If you die because of violence, you must meditate on compassion in order to forgive those who killed you.  When you die realizing this state of compassion, you are truly a child of the Awakened One."

Thankfully, many of us will not ever experience the physical battlefields of war.  Yet, most of us experience a different kind of internal war daily.  The battles on the innerspace in which we catch the scent of feelings we'd rather not feel and we push the inner eject button. 

Instead, as we learn to stay present, courageously present, to face the strong emotions, we build the capacity to face our beasts with resiliency.  To smile and bloom flowers.

Blessings & Namaste.

Writing Challenge for Today: Gather a list of feelings as you experience them today, even if the irrational ones.  Especially the irrational ones.  You know, the sneaky ones that you'd rather stuff--those.  The part that celebrates a friend's success and also senses one's own sadnesses about perhaps not yet achieving that level of greatness.  Instead of pushing that down, instead of running from that, allow yourself to sit with it.  To actually feel it and witness it's dissolution.  Dissolving like sugar in water, sweetening it all the way down.

Melt Your Heart: Fawn Medicine

One evening, my sons called "Mom, Mom!  Come quick!" and there, nestled into our front landscape bed, was a newly born fawn.  It melted my heart to hear my 8 and 11 year olds expressing great concern.  The innocence of this moment touched their hearts.  "Do you think its mom is nearby?" they asked.  "Can we check on him in the morning?" they asked.  And we did.  

 But, in the meantime, I consulted one of my favorite reads, Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams and David Carson. Their book shares a poem, and a mythic tale of each animal's "medicine"--the gifts gracing each animal and hence gracing us by their visit.  

 What I read about fawn inspired me to soften my own heart even more deeply, to discover and melt even more spaces and places within.  I'll share my retelling, with credit to Jamie and David. . .

One day fawn heard Great Spirit calling her to connect on Sacred Mountain, so she began journeying up the mountain.  But, midway up the mountain there lived a horrifying monster, with three heads streaming fire, larger than a skyscraper and roaring an ear-piercing scream at the top of its lungs.  

This monster believed it acquired power by disconnecting creatures from Great Spirit, and such appeared to be true.  The monster was so terrifying that most creatures dropped dead upon sight of it.

But not fawn.  Fawn walked straight up to the monster and said, "Excuse me, sir, please let me pass.  I need to go connect with Great Spirit."   

The monster didn't know what to do? 

No one ever had spoken to it with such soft, strong and clear kindness.  No one had ever asked to pass.  No one had ever dared to face it head on.

So, the monster looked at the fawn, and roared louder. 

But fawn stood there, without a drop of fear in her heart, for she knew that the monster wasn't real.  She stood there, pouring love through her eyes.

The monster breathed smoke all around fawn. 

She stood still, waiting for it to clear, knowing it, too, was illusion.  

Finally, the monster looked down at fawn, and saw her eyes.  She stood there loving him so effusively, that he couldn't help but receive it.

In that moment, all the hardened places in the monster's heart began to melt into a liquified pool and its body shrunk to the size of a walnut, and fawn walked right past and up, up, up to the top of the mountain, to connect with Great Spirit.  She chose love, and it melted even the most hardened of hearts.

When we first hear this story, our first imaginings may be to look lovingly at people and situations that feel like monsters in our lives, and pour loving thoughts towards these.  Perhaps we'd like to melt what feel like external obstacles to connection.  However, if we sit a little longer, we begin to realize that those outer monsters are mere projections of our inner realities.  

What if our first monsters are those within the hardened places of our own hearts?   

Where are the places where we're almost nice to ourselves, but not quite?  

Where are the places where we're still weaving falsehoods that we're not enough?  

What might the deeper truth be?  What might be more true?  

How might we bring the gentility of fawn medicine to melt our own hearts even more?

This is the work.  To fall even more deeply in love with the Self, and bring our authenticity to one another through relationship.  What if, it's through this path, that we become better equipped to weather global changes.

In deep love and gratitude,

Sheryl

copyright 2013, all rights reserved

Strong Glass Houses. . .

As I read a great newsletter by Alison Normore, PhD, this morning, this phrase caught my attention, “We are becoming like glass houses. . . Practicing transparency, surrender, and shedding the past are the new normal in the emerging cycle.”  

How interesting I thought.  Usually glass houses reference the phrase, ‘Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.'  Using ancient tools for modern living, however, we begin to walk more transparently and honestly in the world, as luminous warriors with no enemies in this lifetime or the next, and we gain the awareness that people who walk with transparency need not throw stones at all.  

When we’re walking really 'clean' in the world, owning our shadow places and defusing our triggers,  we no longer need to project our unworthiness, our not 'enoughisms' onto others.  We become, as Alberto Villoldo teaches, so illuminated that we no longer cast a shadow.  We become perfect mirrors for others, without projecting our own baggage onto them.  We gain the ability to see our friends, our lovers, our family members at their essence, and hold that space for their becoming.

This time period offers each of us this opportunity.  To walk, so filled with light, so aware of our own dark spaces, that we’ve excavated them, integrated them, and illuminated them, such that we evolve from homo sapiens-ship into homo luminosity.

To expand further, what then happens, is downright time-space-contiuum warpy in the most magnificent way.  If someone were to throw a stone at a luminous "glass house", time and space would actually bend around the object.  Imagine a cartoon, where a stone is thrown, and the glass alchemizes from solid form into air, and simply opens and allow the stone to pass through and out, and then closes again, and becomes solid.  This is the alchemy that's available to us.

So, although the phrase, 'Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me,' has alluded many of us, as the words have hurt.  They've hurt because they've touched an old wound, and crashed into the wound's wall and lodged inside its pain.  If instead, we become as alchemical as the sun, able to transform from liquid to solid to gas, allowing ourselves to reorganize around the newness of luminosity, there's no place to which the stones stick.  This is the power of our Illumination practices.  The power to unhook the velcro loops of our his-stories, our her-stories, and begin anew.  Illuminated.

If you haven't yet experienced this, and would like to, call a Four Winds practitioner today.  If you feel called to work with me, email me at sherylhope@gmail.com or fill out the form submission on the home page www.goodenergyheals.com.  I'd love to support your luminous wellness journey.

Copyright 2013, All Rights Reserved, Sheryl Netzky

Photo of Don Francisco in Peru by Sheryl H. Netzky. All Rights Reserved, Copyright Sheryl H. Netzky.