strength-of-character

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A show only the magic of nature can provide.

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source

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Gerry Pocha

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Supercharger Photograph: Will Eades

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Receptivity is an exquisite practice.

If you are straining to listen for something, it requires silence. Your mind isn’t wandering, it is focused. Yet it isn’t thinking; it’s attentively waiting.

When we actively practice receptivity, we listen with the entire body and mind. No expectations are helpful; they are forgotten. Instead there is openness, like seeing a puzzle for the first time. This functions optimally in the setting of relaxation rather than tension or strain.

In doing so, we create room for the possibility of life-shifting changes that may occur in an instant.

A number of techniques engage such receptivity:

Prayer. We sometimes use words to get into the mood of prayer but its essence is opening our smallness to the vastness.

Inspiration. The eyes of the inspired see old things in fresh, entirely new ways. Revelation comes through the field of perception, not from the reshuffling of old perceptions.

Energy perception. If you would like to sense what is meant by energy, energy centers, auras, and the like, it requires finely developed receptivity. It is a subtle art and if you are not receptive, you will not be able to see beyond the clouds of your own energies.

Relaxation. The secret to relaxation is reception.

Healing. In practices such as reiki, you do not use your own energy to heal others. You tune your energy field to a universal frequency and that energy comes through you. This is also only possible with the openness of receptivity.

Love. There is the small love that is your own personality’s desires, preferences, and aversions aligning such that devoted pleasure arises around a particular object, person, or circumstance. Then there is the profound love that has no cause and no prerequisites. It pours forth from the heart that is awake and opened.

Receptivity is a fundamental technique that endlessly subverts the ego. It will always take you beyond your fixed limitations and your self-centeredness.

LY

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I am someone with a natural eye for detail and a feel for nuance. This often means I can get overwhelmed by details whenever I am learning something new.

Instead of immediately seeing the big picture and honing in on its details, I see a million seemingly disjointed pieces and then from them I have to piece it all together.

As a result, I can be a very slow learner. And that is okay; it’s just how it is for me.

Learning slowly doesn’t mean being unintelligent or lacking talent. And there are great advantages to my appreciation for the subtle things.

It took me years to understand this about myself, not to mention to be able express it clearly in words like this. By doing so, I can more deliberately work with these features of my mind instead of being walled in by them. At the very least, I can offer myself patience during my learning process and not waste emotional energy fretting over my pace.

Observe your own mind without judging or analyzing it. Insight strikes for no reason other than that openness.

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What good are inner values if one fails to act in alignment with them?

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Operating at your highest self is not bound by certain environmental constraints, and to believe so is to have a fluctuating sense of self depending on what is out of your own control, something that is unstable & random, rather than what comes from within. External factors are temporary, but it is what flourishes from within that remains vitalised so long as it is maintained.

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A lot of the time, our minds anticipate our confrontations with our demons. ‘How will it play out? What will happen next? Am I going to die?’, we frantically ask ourselves, because quite frankly, that is just how our minds perceive these monsters: as threats. So we gear ourselves to do anything to survive. Much of the time, if these assumptions seep into our daily lives, we end up with a distorted version of reality, one in which we try to run & hide, when the world needs us to engage. It is when we realize that the confrontation in our minds is far more debilitating than the ones we actually do encounter in our lives. But your mind cannot distinguish between what’s real & what isn’t, thus our energy is depleted in the face of perceived fear, rendering us incapacitated of our abilities to love, inspire, & give, because we are too hung up on the idea that even stepping foot near such endeavours will deprive us of the energy we spent so long preserving, all in the name of survival.

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It is through the exploration of our potential where we find reverence for our Creator. It is a message of gratitude; gratitude for this beautiful life & all its delicate intricacies of which may go unnoticed on a day to day basis. It is a message of thanks, acknowledgement & recognition of the gift been given to us, allowing us to take it to full advantage, and maybe to even push a little farther than what we initially thought would be possible. Is your limit, really your limit, or do you want to believe it to be so? Question yourself: is my ambition lower than my potential? If you do not challenge yourself on that, what you achieve will always be lower than what you dream.

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There have been so many deaths within the family over the year of COVID. It only made me more aware of how disintegrated our extended family unit is, and how it almost feels as though that will be the fate of our smaller family unit. Anyhow...this is a reminder to leave a life that had been worth living behind. I sometimes look around me & can’t help but wonder: how proud were they, of the life they left behind? Of the connections established? It is a reminder of none other: “Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter?” by Brendon Burchard, when he came close to the face of death. “What life do you think is worth dying for?”, is a question I think is worth asking. Let there be regrets, regrets of mistakes, & let those mistakes be made as early on in your life as you can, before you are faced with an unaltered guilt reflecting back at you on your deathbed: a guilt of leaving a life behind filled with unexplored potential. It is slightly melancholic looking around, and seeing that, even at the death of my father’s parents, they had not been pleased with him, & at the death of my mother’s uncle, she had spent years without seeing him as a result of him being shackled by his family. It’s a shame to see, truly. But if we are not the ones to change, to alter the fate of such a destiny, by sheer force & will to be the ones to take responsibility, responsibility to be the breakers of generational trauma. You are part of the cycle, never forget that. Feed into it, the circle keeps rotating cyclically, you do something different; that is when the trajectory changes. You may feel alone in such instances, but to be alone within the family but still being a representative of justice is a much better pursuit than the pursuit of another’s acceptance. What life do you think is worth dying for?

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I wonder if there is such a thing as taking a step back from your own mind. I think what this may present itself as is walking away from what you currently know to be true, & to deem yourself a mere observer, but this time, not of your surroundings, rather, of your mind-home. Does it need repainting? Does it need refurnishing? Maybe the walls are falling apart, and the ceiling can’t hold itself together. Maybe you’ll find clothes where they shouldn’t be, mugs & glasses scattered in the living room. Maybe it’s dusty, and maybe it’s then you realize that is none other than a reflection of the words being used as building blocks for such a fragile structure: what are the phrases your mind repeats to you, of which you passively accept their subsistence in your mind? Just as a home needs active maintenance, your mind does too. You cannot continue to hoard the outdated, putrefied thoughts infesting the very thing you will be carrying with you for the remainder of your life.

Maybe it is time to get to work to building a more resistant base to the home you’ve built in your mind. & I think I may have just realized that home was never a place, nor a person. With this heart of a traveler, home will always be the very thing you’ve been entrusted with in this life: your soul. The more it is buried, the more confused you will feel. Reconnect with that internal compass & the world is yours.

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Sometimes I wonder how original my thoughts really are, because in silence, we truly are the recipients of our thoughts more than the creators of them. I suppose it is up to us to align ourselves with the ones of which we deem to be true, to live in congruency with who we are.

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It is only when I need to ask myself if I have been holding on too long that I realize I probably have. I need to be more careful with what I let into my headspace.

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I need to U-turn around this & make a quick decision: do I want these current habits embodying my days, encompass the rest of my life?

If the answer is no, then the follow-up is change.

It’s pretty powerful when you realize you are actually not bound to any of this. 

You are only as tied up as the thoughts you besiege within the confines of your own mind.

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The potential for us having been committed so early on would have only neglected the pieces of ourselves which contribute to the larger puzzle of our lives, a decision based on pure idealization. The chasing of an experience, not a lifestyle, never something lasting. I try to remind myself that this is all simply part of the journey. But how much more pain must I endure with holding on, when I know letting go will only seep the poison out my blood?

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People who don’t appreciate your presence, only deserve your absence.

Alexander Auron (via perfectquote)