Category: Soul + Grace + Comfort

How to Meet Your Vulnerability with Tenderness

Delicate things are incredibly beautiful. I held a single jasmine blossom in my hand this morning, amazed at how something so small could offer such powerful perfume. I noticed how I softened in awe of the jasmine flower’s fragile nature. Delicate things do that to us. We are touched by the understated beauty of their vulnerability.

But can we meet the soft and vulnerable parts of ourselves with the same kind of tenderness? Can we release the judgements that we place on our intricate feminine qualities or flaws and see them as things of beauty instead of weaknesses?

I was taught to judge myself harshly and I’ve spent many years on a self-healing path learning to undo this thinking, learning to treat myself with compassion instead. Somehow, holding that tiny flower in my palm offered a new kind of guidance back to wholeness. Is this what I need to do when I project negative judgement towards myself and my so-called ‘weaknesses’?…Hold a tiny flower (or a silky rose petal, a butterfly or a little lady bug) in the palm of my hand. Look at its smallness, its softness and its delicate nature for a moment. Allow myself to shift into gentleness and then hold the vulnerabilities, flaws and things that frustrate me about myself in my heart so that I transfer the same kind of compassion to them.

Every day I am reminded of how important it is for me to be my own nurturer if I want to live in grace and return to wholeness. Using a simple little flower to teach me that may be an inane way to do so, but I am willing to try nonetheless.

How do you meet your vulnerability with tenderness and compassion?

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How To Pray

“You don’t have to throw your bare knees to the cold stone floor at you bedside”, she said.

“There are other ways to pray. Just sit comfortable, close your eyes, be still and call on God(dess) to be with you. When you feel a deep sense of peace come over you, when you feel your heart fill with love, when your feel the room is full of light, then you know that God(dess) is with you.”

Then came the next instruction.

“When you pray, you don’t need to plead, beg, lament in distress or recite the words of a prayer that you were taught in childhood like a limerick. You simply open up a conversation as if you’re talking with a beloved friend or guardian. Ask for guidance. Share your hopes. Offer gratitude for your blessings. Simple be in the presence of holiness for a little while. And then listen…”

She told me that God(dess) doesn’t always answer in words, but most often with a knowing in your heart. The answer may not come today, but trust that your answer and a way forward will be revealed in the days to come. Perhaps you may not even get an answer. Instead, you will wake up to find your situation has been healed and all is on the mend.

She was my spiritual instruction teacher, a compassionate and somewhat unconventional nun named after a rose. I was 16 when I decided to start taking classes with her and she taught me this form of meditative prayer. For a year, I spent my Friday afternoons with her, learning about the church, spirituality, angels, the lives of saints and seemingly simple yet life-changing life skills like how to pray and meditate. While I’ve long let go of the limiting beliefs and ways of orthodox religion and opened up to a broader perception of spirituality, both prayer and meditation have remained a central part of my personal spiritual practice.

Sometimes I wonder why I did that. Why did I choose to offer my Friday afternoons up to learn about spirituality when I could have been hanging out with my friends and getting up to teenage mischief? The only answer I can think of is that it must have been what my soul needed in the midst of my unsettled home life. I followed what my wild essence called me to. These classes gave be the kind of grounding and hope that the adults in my life where unable to give me at the time. Learning how to pray in this manner offered healing for my wounds and inspiration in times when I felt jaded.

Just as there are a thousand ways to draw the sun, there are many ways to pray too.  Is the journey of a feather falling quietly and then landing softly on the Earth not a prayer? What about the way withering sunflowers bow their heads in soulful prayer, surrendering to the beauty of falling apart?

Sometimes a prayer means saying “please help me”, crying yourself to sleep and then waking up with the courage to face another day. And sometimes a prayer is as small a gesture as opening up the conservation to say “thank you” and then listening long enough to hear the response “you are welcome”.

I doesn’t matter who you prayer to. We each need to remain open to what resonates best with our own inner being.

How do you pray?

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“each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.”

~ Mary Oliver, Morning Poem

A Gentle Way into the New Moon

“NEW MOON in CANCER is teaching us to dive deep within to uncover the hidden pearls of self-love and compassion. While the seas of change threaten to bring us under, we must find our feminine flow and ride the currents to new shores.” ~ Mystic Mamma

I’d hoped to emerge a fresh maiden with the rising energy currents of tomorrow’s New Moon. Alas, although my mind and heart are alive with ideas and inspiration, by body hasn’t quite caught up yet. I’ve finally overcome the flu, but other health issues are slowing me down still. Along with winter’s cold grip, it’s got me feeling like an old broken crone. So I’m focusing on giving me body the rest and tender care that it needs.

Sometimes self-care is easier said than done. There is an underlying urge to push myself to do more even when my body is asking for the opposite. Half the battle is giving myself permission to take the time that I need and remembering to stay centred in awareness so that I return that space of inner peace and then just listen to what my body and soul are asking right now. Nonetheless, I’m managing to breathe and journey through life in a gentle way as I quietly gather more strength. I’ve put various tasks, chores and the need to be doing on hold for a bit and am drawing on my ‘inner mother’ whose nurturing I need to love and heal myself.

While I’ve chosen to surrender to this period of sacred pause and won’t be jumping into action as soon as I’d hoped, I am still holding my intentions in my heart, visioning and dreaming them into being, quietly under the warm blankets and between sips of delicious chocolate banana smoothies. One of such dream is an inner beauty meditation. It will be the first free sample of a series of audio meditations I am creating in the near future. I hope to have this first meditation completed and ready to share in the next couple weeks. It’s something dear to me because I created when I needed to release a negative self-perception and learn see more value and beauty within. So using this meditation has had a profound effect on me and I hope that I can share the experience with others too.

In the meantime, may the vibrations of the New Moon bless the intentions and dreams in your heart, as well as guide you to a place of self-love, compassion and divine feminine flow.

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