February | 2012 | Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

image from Jamie's post

How do you wish to spend your time?

Practice: Yoga, meditation, writing, and dog. I read a really great quote in Women Food and God by Geneen Roth about practice:

Spiritual teachers from every tradition describe a profound stillness that is the unvarnished truth of one’s–everyone’s–true nature. But it needs to be broken down in bits by using words and practices because it’s too big to assimilate, especially when people are totally convinced of the damage at their core. The purpose of a spiritual path or religion [and practice] is to provide a precise and believable way into what seems unbelievable.

Self-Care: Doing what it takes to BE healthy and content and well. Some of this is through my practices. It’s also rest, healthy eating, exercise, connection. Understanding my hungers, feeding and connecting with them.

Good (sometimes great) work: Doing work that is satisfying, gives me joy and energy, is creative, but that also serves others, helps them and is of benefit, eases suffering, is wise and kind.

Love: This is a practice and a profession–it’s everything. “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength. Loving someone deeply gives you courage,” (Lao Tzu).

Connection: Being mindful and present, brave and open-hearted, awake and alive.

Relaxed: Peaceful, workable, at ease, free, joyful, happy, a sense of well-being and balance, healthy.

Fit and strong body: Healthy food, enough rest, yoga, meditation, training with Johnny, running with the dogs, hiking.

Deep connection with Eric.

Creative: Making art–quilting, drawing, painting, photography, web design, writing. Being “in the flow,” connected to my basic goodness, content.

Learning: Satisfying my curiosity, following my longing, studying and embodying wisdom and kindness. Teaching, mentoring, and healing. Manifesting knowledge and compassion.

I’m not ready to do a full write up, a whole review of Sunday’s Well-Fed Woman Retreatshop, as I feel like I am still digesting, processing so much of it–but I would like to share some of what I learned, some truths that Rachel shared with us.

1. Truth: “Your hungers are patient.” No matter how long you’ve ignored them, no matter how good you are at denying and disconnecting and distracting yourself, if they are true, primary hungers, they will wait.

2. Truth: We often confuse our secondary and primary hungers. “In fact, this is why so many women are hungry. They go to feed the secondary hunger without addressing the core primary hunger and are often left unsatiated because the secondary hunger isn’t what they want after all,” (read more about this in Rachel’s “Primary Hungers” post). For example, in the Retreatshop on Sunday, I identified being hungry for time, (more time to do lots of things–think, work, play, rest), but Rachel helped me to see that wasn’t the real, fundamental, primary hunger. What I really wanted was to trust myself to make the right decisions about how to spend my time. My primary hunger was for self-care.

3. Truth: We can trust ourselves. “When we are judgmental, we create a very unsafe internal environment.” Enough denial of our hungers leads to distrust. If you feel you can’t trust yourself, you become the enemy, and view each hunger as an attack. And yet, we can change this. We can move from being our own enemy to deep communication and connection. We can provide acceptance and safety and care and love for ourselves. When it comes to our hungers, we can trust them and trust that we know how to feed them. We have all the kindness and wisdom we need to do so.

One wish: that you are well-fed, in all ways, always. That you are full and satisfied, free from suffering.