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Posts from the ‘Emergence’ Category

Liminality

“The connection you are creating here is like a flower. It requires soil and sun, things that, thanks to God, are given freely. But it is you, all of us, who has to water the flower to make it grow. Without water, all relations remain small.”― Tembi Locke, From Scratch

“Anthropologists have coded liminal spaces as the transition between the before and the after of a defining rite of passage. For the rest of us, it may be defined more simply as living in the ellipsis, the unsettled in between where there are no maps. Liminality is a place where contingencies and counterfactuals haunt every hope. On such a quaking threshold, our illusions of control are shaken loose. Liminality can be a profoundly disempowering place to find one’s self. When fear menaces our hope, when we have no knowledge or control over what happens next, all we have is the now, frame by frame, breath by breath, beat by beat.” – Stephanie Duncan Smith, Even After All

Emergence, growth, flourishing in the waiting and wandering
In the middles
Not quite yets
Hallways
Bridges
Detours
Bypasses
Tunnels
Unknowns
Unfolding and unfurling
The in betweens
To be in these spaces
Walking with joy
Rooting and tending
To love deeply
Right on the ground you stand
Remain ever present to beauty, light, wonder of this day
Frame by frame
Breath by breath
Beat by beat

“Love is perhaps what’s left of us when we are no longer all the things we’d primped and planned.”― Heather Lanier, Raising a Rare Girl: A Memoir

Listen Closely

“Every flower blooms at a different pace.” – Suzy Kassem

“Why should I be unhappy? Every parcel of my being is in full bloom.” – Rumi

Expand, narrow.
Inhale, exhale.
Ebb, flow.
Expansion, contraction.
Rhythm, flow.
Ever blooming, slowly, suddenly, on time.
Seasons, cycles, circles.
Seed, root, bloom.
Divergence, convergence, emergence.
The song of a blooming flower.
Listen closely.

“If I listen closely, I can feel and hear the song of a blooming flower.” – Debasish Mridha

Unfolding Paths

“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.” – Rumi

“Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.” – Rumi

Intuition.
Knowing.
Sensing.

Trust.
Observe.
Listen.

Enjoy.
Wonder.
Wander.

Still small voice.
Heed the call.
Step by step.

“Your heart knows the way. Run in that direction.” – Rumi

From Stasis to Transformation

“I’m very concerned that our society is much more concerned with information than wonder, in noise rather than silence. How do we encourage reflection? … Oh my, this is a noisy world.” – Mister Rogers

“Every day in every way we are gently, and sometimes not so gently, being guided in the direction of our inherent truth. Every experience is walking us home to ourselves.”― Shayne Traviss, Your Vivid Life

When I want to …

Put up walls and call them boundaries, knock them down;
Stay hunkered down in the nest, push me out and remind me I have wings;
Bounce from one thing to the next scattered from demands of others, tune out the noise and make music;
Return to old narratives, assumptions and judgments because they prove me right, prove me wrong, show me love and kindness;
Get comfortable in the containment of the chrysalis, wiggle enough to break the pod into a beautiful butterfly;
From stasis to transformation;
Our call and calling;
Change, connect, grow;
The path of walking home to ourselves and the world.

“Stop, be still for a moment, drop your shoulders, close your eyes and take a long deep breath.”― Shayne Traviss, Your Vivid Life

Fertile Ground of Today

“It’s never too late to begin for one who is on the path of making the most of the moment. Where you are is good enough place to begin.” ― Abraham Omorogiuwa

“It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.”― John Cage

Now.
The only space and place to be.
Not looking back stuck in quicksand of regret, resentment, unforgiveness.
Not looking too far ahead frozen by a fabricated future, assuming, predicting, limiting.
Smack in the middle.
Of the present moment.
Keep me in this day.
Where grace, plenty, and enough overflow.
Witness, partake, participate fully.
Evolving, emerging, unfolding in the fertile rich soil of now.
Dig, seed, nurture.

“i will never have
this version of me again
let me slow down
and be with her
– always evolving”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

Still the Waters

“Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,
overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way
to get from here to there.”
― Elizabeth Alexander

“Acceptance is a small, quiet room.” – Cheryl Strayed

Some days.
Struggle bus.
Part of the journey.
Tough days are talking to us.
Pause to listen, to observe, to stop doing or avoiding.
What are we carrying we don’t need to?
Be still and rest.
The answers surface when we stop stirring the water with activity.
Still water, keen senses, rapt attention.
Listen.
Emergence.
Bus stop ahead.

“If you want to understand your mind, sit down and observe it.”― Joseph Goldstein, One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism

Flow of Awakening

“Let reason flow like water around a stone, the stone remains.”― Jane Hirshfield, Come, Thief

“It doesn’t matter what they will make of you
or your days: they will be wrong,
they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,
all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.

Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,
you slept, you awakened.”― Jane Hirshfield

Keep writing your story.
Observe and enter fully.
Pause to celebrate.
Dive in to participate.
The art, science, mystery of becoming.
Imperfect, unexpected, planned, unplanned.
All of it.
From still waters to rushing rapids.
The flow of awakening to life daily.
Where we are in the now.
Enjoy the journey.
It goes by fast.
Someday is today.

“if you see for yourself, hear for yourself, and enter deeply enough this seeing and hearing, all things will speak with and through you.”― Jane Hirshfield, The Heart of Haiku

Out of Rocks

“The whole present moment was a celebration; it always had been; all I needed was fresh eyes to see it.”― Narissa Doumani, A Spacious Life

“There’s something about the flower that grows through the rocks, the pavement; through logs and stone or brick walls… all roses are beautiful; but the rose that emerges unexpectedly through the asphalt has a beauty of soul. The flower that reaches through the brokenness of the wall has a beauty of spirit. You stop to look and not only to look but to cherish! Somewhere along its journey, it decided that it would reach for what was unseen, keep going in the direction of something that wasn’t felt, it decided that it would be. That it would become. And it did. And there is something irreplaceable about that.”― C. JoyBell C.

Through the cracks, crevices, under the door.
Thin spaces.
A sliver of light the guide.
Resilience, resistance, persistence.
Out of rocks.
Beautiful, gritty, brilliant bloom.
Keep going, growing, bursting through.
Fresh eyes on this day.
Emergence.
Spacious life.
Becoming daily.

“It starts with a single breath and the present moment, but where it takes you is into the vast radiance of your true nature, into a magical, spacious life.”― Narissa Doumani, A Spacious Life

Plenitude

“Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.”― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“For a New Beginning”
by John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us

“In out of the way places of the heart
Where your thoughts never think to wander
This beginning has been quietly forming
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire
Feeling the emptiness grow inside you
Noticing how you willed yourself on
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the grey promises that sameness whispered
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.”

The grace and invitation of new beginnings.
Entering new spaces and places.
Becoming and unfolding.
To who you already are within, awaiting to come out to play.
Planting seeds each day, fervent ground.
Emergence of blooming, again and again.

New Paths Unfolding

“It’s not only moving that creates new starting points. Sometimes all it takes is a subtle shift in perspective, an opening of the mind, an intentional pause and reset, or a new route to start to see new options and new possibilities.” – Kristin Armstrong

“Gratitude is one of the strongest and most transformative states of being. It shifts your perspective from lack to abundance and allows you to focus on the good in your life, which in turn pulls more goodness into your reality.” – Jen Sincero

Newfound pauses
Scattered like seeds on fresh soil of the present
Depth of inquiry
Reframing and reshaping
Glancing behind and ahead
On occasion
Focus and attention on the main stage of this day
May I stay awake and aware of what lies right before me
Not fixated on what was nor predicting what will come
Command the day by shifting thoughts followed by actions
Put down the weight of the past to move into an unfolding future
New ink
Blank page
Written by us not for us.

“Sometimes you find yourself in the midst of life and you think, I don’t remember starting this, yet here I am, and sometimes you literally have to wake up and say, It’s time. Despite everything pointing south, I must go north.”― Jennifer Pastiloff