Wishcasting Wednesday

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from Jamie’s post

What Peace Do You Wish For?

The peace of accepting, loving, being who I am. No more pushing or improving or rejecting or denying or hiding or smashing myself to bits, but rather radical self-acceptance as Tara Brach describes it, “the willingness to experience ourselves and our lives as it is.”

To have the peace of confidence the way Susan Piver describes it, “the willingness to be as ridiculous, luminous, intelligent, and kind as you really are, without embarrassment.”

The peace of knowing, as Patti Digh describes at the end of this video conversation with Susan Piver, that what I once thought of as my brokenness is actually my superpower.

The peace of my innate worth, my fundamental nature as Pema Chödrön describes it,

We already have everything we need. There is no need for self-improvement. All these trips that we lay on ourselves—the heavy-duty fearing that we’re bad and hoping that we’re good, the identities that we so dearly cling to, the rage, the jealousy and the addictions of all kinds—never touch our basic wealth. They are like clouds that temporarily block the sun. But all the time our warmth and brilliance are right here. This is who we really are. We are one blink of an eye away from being fully awake.

The peaceful awareness that I am meant to shine, as Marianne Williamson explains,

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.

I wish for the peace of showing up as I am with my heart open, even when it’s hard and it hurts, the contentment and clarity of embodying the openness, intelligence, and warmth that is my basic nature. While I wish this for myself, know that it would bring peace to my heart and to my life, I also wish it for others, so that this peace would manifest in the world, that our comfort and courage, our collective awareness and mindfulness, would ease suffering in the world.

One of my favorite hymns in church as a kid had these lyrics, “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.” This is my wish.

Three Truths and One Wish

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1. Truth: It’s not going to stop until I wise up. I was beating myself up the other day for eating so many lemon poppy seed scones in a single day, (each one is glazed and as big as my face, and I was having a hard week, somehow thought eating them was going to make me feel better, but feeling instead a mix of shame and disgust–this is how it always works). I was starting to get angry, why does this keep happening? why can’t I control myself? why can’t I stop? It was in that moment that I felt something snap and then soften, felt some measure of surrender, giving up, letting go, and I knew: this will continue as long as I deny myself, hide and reject who I truly am, what I really want and feel and need and am, and then it will be over. I realized that until I surrender to what life is really asking of me, give in completely, give up all of the habits and excuses that are stopping me, it won’t ever stop–I have to surrender to what is, to who I am.

2. Truth: I need to shift from a focus on growth to one of sustainability. The way I’m approaching my experience isn’t working, can’t be maintained, is happening at the cost of my health and my sanity. I’m not sure exactly what it should look like instead, I just know I can’t keep doing it like this. I’ll burn out, fade away. I’m attempting and accumulating, but it’s not sustainable. I’m craving space, hungry for stillness and quiet, wanting to clean and declutter, to nest, to rest. It’s the season, but it’s also the path I’ve been on (more like a German autobahn than a path), driving so fast and working so hard to get where, exactly?

3. Truth: Where I want to be, what I am longing to manifest is who I already am, just me, to be that. The card in the picture is on my desk at my paid work. It’s been there for the past year, even though it’s one from a set of 53. There it sits, day after day, giving me its wisdom, silently sending me its message, waiting patiently to be noticed, and I continue to be so busy, I don’t even see it. Until the other day, when I actually saw it, looked, listened, opened my heart to it, felt it whisper this is what I want.

One Wish: For simplicity and spaciousness. “We all want a sense of spaciousness and freedom, but we find we can claim that freedom, strangely, only by living out a focused, radical, courageous simplicity,” (David Whyte). That–a focused, radical, courageous simplicity–that is what I wish for today, kind and gentle reader. For all of us.