Sparks in Wisdom's Fire: June 2019

Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Compassion: The Art of Loving Our Self

Who is the most difficult person we will ever love? I nominate our self. Why? We spend so much time in our head ruminating on what we did or what we said. Replaying situations that didn’t go as planned. We pick our self apart focusing on the imperfections while minimizing the most lovable aspects of our self.

I am not advocating that we ignore the parts of our self that we do not like or that we excuse or justify bad behavior. Truly loving our self is about loving every aspect of our self no matter how difficult it is to like that part of our self. This love looks imperfection in the eyes not as a stare down but as a gaze of compassion. A compassion that paves the way of soul purpose.

Love exposes wounds, acknowledges hurts, and soothes aches. It is a balm that heals us in ways that do not diminish the challenge of suffering; rather, it empowers us to meet the challenges with courage and grace. With our courage and grace, love permeates the self through the cracks of our woundedness. Within those healed cracks are spaces to grow into our true self.

This loving and being our true self is a spiral that grows ever wider reaching deeper into those secret places of wounds and fears. Our courage and truth seeps into those spaces empowering us to accept who we really are. We befriend the wound not to feed its festering but to intentionally soothe it with the healing balm of love. Courage shifts our perception of who we think we are into who we truly are.

How do we love our self into being our true self?

Begin each day affirming self love by gently breathing unconditional love into your being.
When you notice an imperfection, don’t run away from it or stuff it into a convenient corner. Notice it. Own it. Find the roots of its trigger. Name the lesson. Create a strategy to love the imperfection into oblivion.
Live with courageous understanding — know that you are doing your best in the moment.

In the end, we love our self not because of our words, thoughts, and actions. We love our self through our imperfections to connect to the flickering spark of sacred-extraordinary within.

Vanessa F. Hurst, ms, is a Life Coach through Intuitive Connection, professional speaker, and author who weaves her inner wisdom into all she touches. Her books are available @ www.wildefyrpress.com. Contact Vanessa @ vanessa@intentandaction.com for life coaching, keynotes, programs, and intuitive consultations.

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Tuesday, June 18, 2019

Compassion & The Controlled Rock

Don’t rock the boat. Has someone ever said that to you? Even though you didn’t want to follow the advice, you might have. Maybe things were okay with no boat rocking. Or, maybe you felt an uneasiness —something wasn’t quite right when you conformed. You got more and more frustrated until you flooded that boat with your rocking.

I bet you could have rocked that boat more effectively if you weren’t so frustrated. Maybe if you had a boat rocking plan in the beginning, the outcome would have been different. Most of us who don’t like confrontation — me included — find so many ways not to bring about change until transformation is our only option. Waiting until the last minute, we often react instead of respond to conflict.

There is an art to boat rocking the doesn’t include causing a tsunami of reactions and the subsequent chaos. Let’s call it the controlled rock. This is accomplished through awareness of self, conscious courage, and curious daring. Using our intuition we formulate a plan of action that will get us maximum results from minimum rocking.

Our intuition speaks to us in every moment of every day. Sometimes we choose to listen and other times we are caught rushing from thought to thought, task to task, or distraction to distraction. Cast adrift, we lose our anchor. Our boat sails blissfully unaware into even choppier waters. Our only recourse seems reaction. But, at any point, we can engage a controlled rock.

We have a choice to turn our reactions into response. Before engaging a controlled rock, we

Calm and center our self. This may be focusing on our breath or checking in with our thoughts, emotions, or physical sensations. It may include taking a walk, listening to music, or sitting in silence. Or, it might be something else that brings us objectively into the moment.
Ask, “What is going on inside of us? What woundedness is hurting? How are our triggers poking at this woundedness?
Name the triggers and the woundedness.
Love and accept our self — imperfects, wounds, and all.
Ask, “How can we respond in loving gentle ways while bringing about effective change?”
Listen to the answers with courage and curious daring.

Any boat can be rocked in compassionate ways. But, it takes courage to create a controlled rock response instead of a rocking reaction. It takes curious daring to explore how we can affect positive change and courage to be a change agent. When we rock the boat, those droplets of potential transformation splash upon us and other. They wake us up to the awareness that change, although necessary, does not need to be frightening.

Tuesday, June 11, 2019

Navigating Uncertainty in Moments of Too Much is Enough

Did you ever just want to say enough? Jump off the merry-go-round of life and hide yourself away? The uncertainty of the world was overwhelming. Finding a way forward through the cobwebs of disappointment was just too much. What do you do instead of saying enough or leaping from the merry-go-round of life?

Some will encourage you to count your blessings. And, to a certain extent, I am all for that. But, sometimes you’ve got to inject a bit of realism into what is happening. Acknowledge what is not working. Take some time to be with the disappointment, the sorrow welling up from yourself. Those are the breathing moments in which you find a balance between your suffering and your hopes and dreams.

Those moments of enough aren’t about reframing a situation and the circumstances you find yourself in. Breathing into the moment, you really feel the cobwebs of disappointment and are aware of how they tangle into every part of your being. That realization is the scary, difficult part.

It is undeniable that the cobwebs wrap us in fear. As we breathe into the moment, we move into objectivity. We set aside the everything will be all right philosophy and truly rest in the uncertainty. Non-attached, we don’t judge or defend where we find ourself. In fact, our courage propels us through the uncertainty as our curiosity seeks the best way forward.

We give up control while acknowledging that sometimes, no matter, what our optimistic projections don’t quite work out. With this realization we have a choice: we can throw up our hands in discouragement and burrow deeper into our despair or we can take life as it is. When we choose the latter, we actively feel our suffering and gain the power to create a pathway through it.

Taking life as it is really isn’t about giving up. It isn’t about making the best of a situation. No, taking life as it is requires that we are realistic. We name our challenges and the lessons we need to learn. We commit to living those answers no matter how difficult they may be.

If you are like me, you do have moments of wanting to shout “enough” from the highest rooftop. And, maybe you’ve tried to leap from merry-go-round and search for a hideaway. But, in the end, we cannot run from life. It will catch up to us. What we can do is stop, turn around, and confront those uncertainties that overwhelm and scare us.

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Tuesday, June 4, 2019

Compassion is Sticky

Compassion is sticky — an ooey, gooey, wonderful way of responding to the world. Is there a greater act than to alleviate suffering? I don’t think so. With each act of compassion comes a pinging of energy — we share compassion with another and a joyous, healed feeling returns to us. In the muck of suffering, we are healers — no matter what our profession.

But, before we get to the point of sharing compassion, we have to be willing to step in the mud. To let suffering ooze up between our toes and creep up our legs. To be splattered with our suffering or that of another while being objectively open and unconditionally loving whatever the circumstance. Think about that. Feel that image. It isn’t an easy one to embrace, is it?

When I feel the squish of suffering, my instinct is to get as far away from suffering as possible. But, then, I feel my heart beating the rhythm of compassion. It synchronizes with suffering demanding that I stay in the mud, feel the rhythm of suffering ooze around me, stay in the moment no matter how great the suffering. In my indecisiveness, I hear the whisper of compassion urging me to lean upon its strength.

To be compassionate is to be empathetic. We feel the emotions of another but do not get caught in them. We actively squish through that field of mud walking with another in whatever way alleviates their suffering. We recognize that we are not in charge of anything. We really do not even alleviate suffering so much as hold the space for another to alleviate their own suffering. We are servants of compassion.

How do we navigate as a servant of compassion? Through awareness. We are aware

of suffering and the potential to get caught by angst of suffering
of how our actions may enable the behavior that triggered suffering or that negates the lesson inherent in the suffering
that suffering is not bad or good — that’s a judgment — suffering is an opportunity for growth — ours and another’s
that suffering is not permanent. We learn the lesson, transform, and continue our life path

Suffering says, “Learn from me. Be stronger because of our interaction. Because like all things, I, too, shall pass.” The hope that shines from compassion and dries the mud of suffering sings, “you will emerge from the ooey, gooey mud of suffering, better, more authentic, and true to our self.”