Tuesday, October 26, 2021

Jeff Brown: The Sweetest Gift Of All

This is so wise and true. On my own journey — and the journeys that I've witnessed in countless others both personally and professionally — I've discovered the profound value of bravely seeking and illuminating again and again what I've hidden away within myself. This is an empowering path of shining bright light on our triggers and deepening our capacity to understand and heal, to act more skillfully, and to bring greater wisdom, compassion, and love to ourselves and to all of our relationships. Bless Jeff Brown for these deeper truths that he shares, a potential gift for us all. — Molly


Think of your triggers as ghosts from your experiential and ancestral history. They are ghosts who have not yet found their peace. They want to—that’s why they keep showing up in your life—but they need your help. They need you to get in close, and listen as they share their unresolved past with you. They need you to see them, in just the same way you want to be seen. If you keep ignoring them, they won’t go away. They will just show up more often. And your life will become a kind of ghost-fulfilling prophecy, one where every choice you make will haunt your days. Perhaps its time that we accepted that we are the haunted house that we fear. In each room, a ghost that is ready to be liberated. In the basement, the unconscious that is ready to be revealed. We don’t need to give ourselves candy on Halloween. We just need to give ourselves permission to heal. That’s the sweetest gift of all.

— Jeff Brown 
 
 

Sunday, October 24, 2021

Wendell Berry: Love Is What Carries You

Love is what carries you,
for it is always there,
even in the dark,
or most in the dark, 
but shining out at times like gold
stitches in a piece of embroidery.

— Wendell Berry
 

Lingering Longer In the Eyes of a Stranger

This is so lovely and tender and needed and worth posting again. I love this reflection about lingering a little longer in the eyes of a stranger. The individual and collective cultural pain that is surfacing today with so much violence, tragedy, separation, and loss indeed invites us to strengthen our empathic consciousness. This empathy, compassion, kindness, and caring is the medicine we can increasingly work to embrace within ourselves and share with all beings. This is the process of transforming violence and tragedy into that which heals and awakens. May we all be rooted in a commitment to alleviate the suffering within ourselves, our communities, our nation, and the world. The ripples we send out and absorb inwardly matter deeply. May we choose mindfully that which nourishes and strengthens the gifts we bring to this beautiful world we share. We are all related, all connected, and all in this together. — Molly

Do you notice
how tragedies soften the heart
pluck us out of the daily grind
and you linger in a stranger's eyes
a second or two longer?
Connected, we are
and indeed, the crack is where
the light gets in.

— Molly Hahn