Dear Monday Evening Beauties,
Oh, how I love the freedom to explore what arises in our circle! Thank-you ladies for a contemplative and powerful gathering last night!
Here is the reading I shared at the beginning of class. Thank-you for the heartfelt conversations and sharing that followed. I bow down to your willingness to be open, vulnerable, honest and humble. Know that you are not alone.
“The Wisdom of No Escape
The central question of a warrior’s training is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how we relate to discomfort. How do we practice with difficulty, with our emotions, with the unpredictable encounters of an ordinary day? For those of us with a hunger to know the truth, painful emotions are like flags going up to say, “You’re stuck!” We regard disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, jealousy, and fear as moments that show us where we’re holding back, how we’re shutting down. Such uncomfortable feelings are messages that tell us to perk up and lean into a situation when we’d rather cave in and back away.
When the flag goes up, we have an opportunity: we can stay with our painful emotion instead of spinning out. Staying is how we get the hang of gently catching ourselves when we’re about to let resentment harden into blame, righteousness, or alienation. It’s also how we keep from smoothing things over by talking ourselves into a sense of relief or inspiration. This is easier said than done.
Ordinarily we are swept away by habitual momentum. We don’t interrupt our patterns even slightly. With practice, however, we learn to stay with a broken heart, with a nameless fear, with the desire for revenge. Sticking with uncertainty is how we learn to relax in the midst of chaos, how we learn to be cool when the ground beneath us suddenly disappears. We can bring ourselves back to the spiritual path countless times each day simply by exercising our willingness to rest in uncertainty of the present moment - over and over again.
”
Here is the closing Kuan Yin passage and prayer that I shared at the end of our class:
“The only wish of the Divine Mother Goddess is that all beings be spiritually free. The Divine Goddess calls us to realize our true nature, to fall in love with our own divinity. Enlightenment is a culmination of many small steps, each one as a drop of water forming a divine ocean of peace, realization, love and unity within us, an ocean that washes away fear, separation and scarcity and bathes us in abundance and bliss. You carry the torch of enlightenment within you, beloved. Let it shine each day.
Beloved Kuan Yin, Green Tara, Mazue, Goddesses of the Great Divine Mother, please help me to live my light, to live my enlightenment in each day, to know my own Self and to live the beauty and bliss with peace in my heart. Thank you for your help. Om Shanti. I feel your Peace in my heart now. May all beings feel and know this peace within. Om Shanti. Om Mani Padme Hum.”
— "Dynasty of the Divine Mother", Kuan Yin Oracles by Alana Fairchild
OM MANI PADME HUM
THANK-YOU for chanting this with me. Wowza! What an experience that was...a first for me... and I cannot wait for more!
“Om Mani Padme Hum is a powerful heart opening, consciousness-raising, peace-finding prayer of divine power. It is probably the most utilized mantra on Earth so it has a lot of group energy supporting it and those that choose to use it. It helps bring compassion and resolution to any issue. It calls on the divine power of Kuan Yin, of all beings of unconditional love, and the Divine Mother, as well as your own divine spark expressing through your Soul to get on board and help resolve whatever needs to be resolved.
It means ’the opening of the jewel in the lotus,’ or ‘may the heart awaken with divine compassion and may I know myself to be an awakened being of light’.
Om sounds like “pom”, Mani as in “manicure”, Padme sounds like “pud-maye”, Hum rhymes with “gum””
May the warmth and energy of spring fill your week!
xo
Patti
