October is a powerful month for me. It changed my life 41 years ago when I gave birth to my first child and two years later to my second child. How life has changed. Could I have written the chapters ahead of time? Absolutely not. I’m glad I didn’t know ahead of time what it looked like. Hindsight may be 2020, but it doesn’t help when looking ahead.
I often reflect on the chapters in my life like puddles that I must wade through in order to experience and learn. Of course, a puddle is one experience, and a sinkhole is another. As I age, I recognize the difference. No matter whether it’s a puddle or a sinkhole, learning happens. The more aware I become, the more I realize my awareness was always there and I ignored it.
As I live through this extraordinary time, I am realizing the importance of subtlety. It’s where truth lies quietly waiting without bling and bang. Less is more. I hear so much inner noise and outer noise, the time of silence is refreshing and relieving. Day after day through this time, silence gives me space to breathe, opens my mind, my heart, my thoughts and feelings. A consistent time of renewal. Even if I don’t use it in a renewing sense, it is there available to me. Some days I use silence to think. The big difference in this thinking is it’s not stinking thinking. It’s positive thinking about my day, about my emotions, about people I love. It leaves me still feeling smooth, refreshed knowing I paused to hear me.
Someone said yesterday how good they felt complimenting someone. The opposite is true when we meet someone and moan about life. The difference lies in words and intention. A compliment holds positive energy. The moaning holds negative energy. Positive energy feeds me positive energy. My body reacts and feels good to positive food. I make mindful food choices every day by deciding what I want, picking it up and putting it in my mouth. I do the same with my word choices and my interactions with others. I choose good words and good interactions and feed them to my mind. The rest I leave on the plate where it heads to the compost.
Awareness is the first step in choosing what we feed our minds. This is a new month in an extraordinary time. This new month brings new opportunities for new ideas, new behaviors and new awareness. As I live each day amid a world of chaos and the great unraveling, I take care of myself with the food I ingest both physically and spiritually. I comfort myself in times of distress. I treat myself with kindness and respect. I remedy my fears with tools I gather in my learning, and go forth with an intention of holding love and light, believing there is nothing stronger. I focus on the good and the rest lands in the compost pile.
Prayer for a Month of Blessings
May October be a month of blessings: blessings of goodness, blessings of joy, peace and kindness, friendship and love, creativity, strength, serenity, fulfilling work and dignity, satisfaction, success, and sustenance, physical health and radiance. May truth and justice guide our acts, and compassion temper our lives that we may blossom as we age and become our sweetest selves. May it be so.
Participants’ Reflections:
During the meditation, I thought about suppers growing up. We were made to eat everything on the plate before we could have dessert. Now, in my life, I can eat dessert first if I want to and not put it off. I don’t have to eat the liver and onions and turnip greens of life if I don’t want to. Also, we didn’t compost. We had a bucket by the table because we had pigs, and leftovers went into the bucket as did the dishwater and you name it.
As we started meditating, I had to run my portable washer. It was going off-balance yesterday. When it washes, it’s churning. It’s like the churning of negative talk and all the negative things going on now. I try to choose my words carefully when I’m talking with someone. But like the washer, when the water goes out into the sink and it goes into a smoother state, it’s like what you were saying in your reading. Also, if everyone could keep me and my family member in their prayers. I appreciate it.
When I was growing up, we were forced to clear our plates as well. It was enforced not only by my father, but by my uncles. At family gatherings, we were reminded we couldn’t leave our seat until we cleared our plate. It was militaristic to me. So now, it’s been a process of unraveling that feeling of needing to obey, of individuating from it. I don’t always clear my plate and sometimes I eat dessert before my meal. It feels liberating.
Thank you for your reading. Anniversaries, birthdays and all these remembrances are very powerful. They hold us with their energy. Sometimes it is good and sometimes it is painful.
I love this talk of cleansing and renewal. How fitting, a new month, a full moon. Full moons are known for releasing and clearing out. I want to watch it rise tonight. This talk reminds me of my relationship with my father. Someone suggested writing a letter to put my thoughts into words. I was going through a tough time this summer and I reached out to my father, which I never do. It took a while to reach out to him and he didn’t acknowledge me. That hurt and I was angry and still feel angry. I’m trying to not let it consume me. I’m sure he’ll read my letter. I have to wait until I have the mindset to write it, not when my life is changing so much. I want to get the words right and let him know how I feel. I don’t want it to be too ugly but I want to get it out.
That’s what a drafts and rewrites are for until it sounds true.
I had a difficult relationship with my father and I did write him a letter. He did the best he could but he could not accept what I was telling him. I wanted him to give me something back. I heard this expression once, “You were going for bread in a hardware store.” He had no bread to give me. I’ve always thought that sometimes one is looking for something the person isn’t capable to give.
Thank you all for sharing your sacred time, your sacred self, in our silence and in our listening. Have a wonderful day.