I spent all day yesterday resisting Jamie’s wishcasting prompt:What do you wish to change? Change = to make or become different. It’s a risky, slippery concept for me, can quickly take me from good intention to judgement and criticism, to focusing on everything that’s wrong, practicing rejection and denial rather than working with what is from a place of curiosity and openness, understanding and acceptance.
For example, if I say I wish to change how I care for and relate to my body, it’s not long before I’m making a list of rules, shoulds, and restrictions, which leads to self-loathing, beating myself up, regret and depression, focusing on all the ways I’ve let myself down, rejecting the body I have now, denying it love and acceptance because it’s not good enough, because I want it to be different, because I wish to change it.
Wishing for change is also risky for me because it can so easily shift my focus to the future, pull me out of the present moment into planning and strategizing, doing, doing, pushing and pulling. In this state, there is no ease, no rest, no balance, no kindness.
Of course, I wish for change in all sorts of ways, specifically in the ways that the current state of things might be causing suffering. Alexandra Franzen always says she wants to leave the world a better place than she found it, to leave the people she encounters better than she found them, so I suppose this is a good, simple way to frame this wish: I wish to change things for the better, and in so doing may I release my agenda, avoid judgement and attachment, and ease suffering, in myself and in the world.
You can do amazing things with the simplest things. You can have so little and be so happy. You can take small amounts of time and perform life-changing acts…Your heart knows when it’s time, and you will have the strength to do it. And best of all, you will see enormous changes happen in your life when you let the unimportant things go and embrace the things that quietly sustain you and bring you joy…It may not look like the most glamorous life, but it is one filled with joy, peace, and harmony; one where laughter is a welcome and frequent companion; one where worries are few, where long meaningful conversations are many; one that is waiting for you when you are ready to take the steps to get there…Simplify today, one little thing at a time. You can do it. You are LOVED.
21. A poem from Rainer Maria Rilke, Go to the Limits of Your Longing,
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
22. 10 Things You Should Do Every Day, on Elephant Journal. Again, I’ve shared this before but it’s important enough to take another look.
Nobody, Jill, is who they are based upon one decision, one day, one path, one chance, one relationship, or one anything else. Every day is brand new and opportunity never stops knocking.
29. Your Story Matters, in which Jen Louden references the workshop we did together this weekend, and makes an incredibly important point — maybe the most important point of all.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 