Yesterday you said, ‘softening into uncertainty is fine’. What does that mean?
The person who greets her inner wobble can softly release the inner hardness she has customarily used to defend herself against a seemingly chaotic world.
Oh, Caroline Myss has some good things to say on chaos. Let me have a google…
Here’s one:
My God, I love Caroline Myss so much. This quote actually makes me cry. The very idea that, as it were, ‘that chaos I was dodging was God along’ makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time.
So, what does it look like to turn our lives round to work with, rather than against or running away from, chaos?
It means to drop all expectations. Expectations can only spring from human order. The reason young adults might recoil from the idea of parenthood is that the glimpses they may have had of parenting reveal children as a force of chaos! The human strives to control and order their lives – that’s what their education set them up to do after all. But a new parent will sense quickly that in the seeming chaos of parenthood, for the first time maybe, they have the blessed opportunity to experience the flow of divine order.
It was liberating – to turn my (pretty strong) will over to the needs of a precious baby. It was a relief to let go of the steering wheel of my life, and let the requirements of love of my beloved girls programme the satnav of my days. Now, I am challenged with allowing in a different satnav – no longer that of beautiful, loving, enchanting and dependent children – but that of an unseen force.
Care is to be taken there, right?
Exactly! There is so much stuff knocking around in the psychic airways! Not all of it good, wise, kind. A lot of it unhinged, it seems. And how’s a girl to discern what’s what if we’re told that ‘chaos is divine order’?
By their fruits.
Ah. True. Fruits. Ok. The old output, outcome, giving out the goodness you get in… Shall we read?
-67- Everyone under heaven says my Tao is great and resembles nothing else. It is because it is great that it seems different. If it were like anything on earth it would have been small from the beginning. I have three treasures that I cherish and hold fast. The first is gentleness, the second is simplicity, the third is daring not to be first among all things under heaven. Because of gentleness I am able to be courageous. Because of simplicity I am able to be generous. Because of daring not to be first I am able to lead. If people forsake gentleness and attempt to be courageous, forsake simplicity and attempt to be generous, forsake the last place and attempt to get the first place, this is certain death. Gentleness conquers in battle and protects in defence. What heaven guards, it arms with the gift of gentleness. (The Tao Te Ching 67)
WOW! This is a cracker! What depth and power to these concepts, so beautifully articulated. Let me now do an act of vandalism and summarise them:
Three Treasures
- Gentleness grants me courage
- Simplicity grants me generosity
- Daring not to be first grants me leadership
If I forsake the three treasures, and attempt courage, generosity and leadership nonetheless, ‘this is certain death’.
May gentleness soften me, and make me brave.
May simplicity release me from grasping, and make me abundant.
May ‘daring not to be first’ allow me to sit softly within the chaos of divine order.
***Silent20minBreathingMedWithEyeMask+OnAlphaBrainWavesEventuallyArising***
Mantra arising: “I am gentling…”
Every new state begins as a thought.
Really? Not the other way round?
You have to think it to create it.
Starkly put. Thank you.
Every new state begins as a thought, and ‘gentling’ feels like a good state to bring about.
May I ‘gentle’ gently then, into that divine order which once I called chaos. May I learn to flow trustingly with the perfect tides of this life I am living, and grow in courage accordingly.
I am gentling