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Guilt

10/17/2015

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Guilt is a powerful thing.  It’s a boulder between my shoulder blades, the shadow side of my heart.  It’s  tension in my jaw.  It’s a jackhammer of shoulds drilling holes of pain in my mind.

I woke up with this discomfort one morning.  I carried it with me to the cushion.  I tried to infuse my heart with curiosity and care, and massage these tender places with warm breath.  The tender places began to relax, to feel welcome and loved.

The jackhammer of
shoulds began to drill again.

What about tonglen practice?  Shouldn’t you be taking in the suffering of so and so who has bigger problems than you do?  Shouldn’t you breathe in and out for these beings?  Isn’t your practice of self-compassion here a little SELF-INDULGENT!

I felt the boulder wedge itself more deeply into the space between my shoulder blades, and my jaw lock in place.  The throbbing in my temples began to pulsate once more.

I was also aware of something outside my body, a presence that simply noticed the struggle between self-compassion and endless judgements.  I heard another voice.


Sweetheart, let go of your thoughts.  Come back to the sensations, your warm loving breath.  Soften, soothe, and allow.

I will probably hear both voices, the critical and kind my voice my whole life.  The critical voice doesn’t scare me anymore, because I’ve heard the kind voice.  I’m beginning to trust it a heck of a lot more than the critical one.  I also don’t hate the critical voice, because I know it is the kind voice in disguise.

 “Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” (Rilke)

Maybe guilt is compassion in disguise – a scaly, fire breathing dragon threatening us with a zillion
shoulds until we can hold it tenderly and transform it with our loving attention into a beautiful princess.  This princess understands the suffering of the world and how she wants to meet it because she knows her own suffering intimately.  Her compassion is not born from a constricted canal of bloody shoulds, but an open lotus canal where roots are anchored deep in the mud of her own suffering to know theirs.
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Womb Wisdom

10/15/2015

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"Over my dead body!"

His statement was filled with clear conviction.  It's why I love him.

But something about his statement rubbed me the wrong way.  It didn't feel like it was coming from a passionate heart, but a closed heart.

Why wasn't our daughter allowed to dress in Goth if she chose to when she was older?  It was a hypothetical scenario.  Not even one she had expressed.  In fact, I couldn't even remember how this whole conversation started.

I just felt sad, frozen.  Autumn had already arrived, but the weather outside made no indication of this.  Was Autumn announcing herself to me secretly?

"Let it fall.  Let it go."

I'm in the second half of my moon cycle, premenstrual with the onset of menses scheduled to occur this Saturday.  This is definitely a time when parts of me are lost in shadows.   I'm tired; my ligaments are more lax; my skin is dull and rough; there's more bloating, cramping, and emotional lability.

It's harder to love myself during this time.  I prefer the energetic, creative, bright, outgoing Kaveri over this version of me.  If I were to paint a moon mandala, the first part of my moon cycle would be bright with sunrises, lotuses -  lush, green, friendly.  In stark contrast, the second half of my moon cycle contains a boggy, bloated, bloody uterus suspended in darkness.

But didn't I birth my daughter from this darkness?  Isn't this where all my creativity and compassion are nurtured tenderly in silence and stillness till it's time to give birth?

My husband expressed dissatisfaction at our daughter dressing a certain way in the near future.  I now understand my uterine contraction and reaction.

As women, we must honor our moon cycles no matter which phase we are in.  My daughter is premenarchal.  I am probably knocking on the door to perimenopause.  No matter which stage you are in, let  your womb wisdom speak to you.

You won't be disappointed...
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    Kaveri Patel, a woman who is always searching for the wisdom in waves.

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