Truth is: I went on yesterday to deploy a veritable Armada of <{“w0rRds”}>. I worked so hard across the afternoon, with four calls booked in and a barrage of important (or ‘important’) emails to get out by close of play. I worked from 12 as per plan, but had to rip myself away from it all at getting on for 7pm. My sleep that night: leg-twitching, psoas-trembling, tossing-and-turning. I’m knackered, and a bit pre-menstrually dysphoric tbh. Work with me?
Today is Day 5 of your new Plant-Powered regime and MEDSAN protocols. Give it time! Wait til after your period – you’ll see what you have been achieving then.
We saw you planning to start work at 10am today. Please don’t.
But… I’m behind on documentation I should have got out on Monday!
Fitness First. That is what you promised yourself for this quarter. And so bowing out of your morning walk and stretch (which is what a 10am work start would mean) goes against that protocol. Also, Fitness First also means psychological Fitness First, and your dear Mind needs to be able to trust that when you say “Regular Working Hours 12 – 5pm”, you mean sincerely that you will not start earlier unless for an unavoidable and paid booking. Why? So it can relax into, oh dear friend, a routine – a routine that is sustainable and balanced for you.
I hear you. Thank you. Yes. After 7 straight hours of work, you lose priorities.
Managing your priorities is your safeguard against burnout.
Today’s Tao Te Ching reading?
And yesterday’s…?
‘Many words lead to exhaustion’. Indeed. :/ Ok. Got it. Today…. Chapter 6:
-6- The valley spirit never dies. It is the unknown first mother, whose gate is the root from which grew heaven and earth. It is dimly seen, yet always present. Draw from it all you wish; it will never run dry. (Ref)
After yesterday’s exhausting word-frenzy, I’d like to focus on this notion of a ‘valley spirit’ or ‘unknown first mother’ and the idea you can ‘draw from it all you wish’.
Like the air you breathe – it will never be consumed, it is always there to sustain you.
Sometimes I forget to draw sustenance from the sources available to me, and I drain my own battery.
You are learning the way of the Way which takes never too much and gives never too little. You are absorbing the skills of true living, very gently and gradually. This is perfectly timed, because you are transitioning while ‘awake’. It is like having an operation while you are conscious – gradual must be the intervention to ensure the correct area is locally anaesthetised in any given moment.
I used to long for a grand awakening in my sleep, from one day to the next. That was my expectation, in fact!
You all believed that ‘ascension’ would come upon you all like a spiritual catalyst in the night. Well it did! It’s just that ‘the Night’ is a metaphor, not a literal 12 hour period spent mostly in bed asleep. Rising up from your ‘beds’ during the Night is altogether the Work of this Day. And from whence comes the Light to see in the Dark? From the ‘valley spirit’ or ‘unknown first mother’ from whom you may draw at will. The skill is to know when and how to draw…
And that would be…?
Draw constantly upon Spirit! Step upon the gentle, giving rug of faith at each moment!
I pray for a heart and mind that intertwine with Spirit moment by moment.
Well then, that is your gift to yourself. Receive it!
In humility, gratitude, amazement for your guidance…
The guidance is yours and yours alone. Internalise this guidance, as the hermit welcomes the weary traveller into her hermitage and exchanges shelter for teachings.
Thank you.
I am intertwined with Spirit
******
[Later in the morning:]
So maybe what I’m developing is a habit of giving myself a balance of Yin Mornings (MornYINg) and Yang Afternoons (AfterYANGs).
I finished Medical Medium on my walk. Wow, WHAT a profound book. Thank you, Anthony William, for your Work and teachings. I’m on Day 5 of a Medical Medium orientated diet (plant-powered, virtually vegan, roughly raw, grazing green) and feeling positive. Next I’m going to listen to Liver Rescue (twice as long at 25hours!).
After finishing Medical Medium, I finished off my walk with the first two lessons from this beautiful course on Insight Timer (which I finally went premium on yesterday):
My goodness, using invocations, prayers and Taoist meditation as I walked through the forest, I got that sense of being ‘intertwined with Spirit’. Ty.
Now I’m having another amazing fruit and veg chopped salad, and listening to the Tao of Pooh, and learning about the Vinegar Tasters as a way to understand Confucianism, Buddhism & Taoism:
“Happy serenity” as a key Taoist trait…