Don’t Go Back to Sleep

OFF THE MAT

Weekly Thought Offering:
The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
-Rumi

What we don’t heal we pass on
-NK

Weekly Journal Prompts:
The real reason I ______ is because…
The reason under that is…..
The reason under that is….
It serves me (even if negatively) by….
I am ready to free it because….

Weekly Mantra:
I release old negative patterns that are no longer serving me
I welcome my greatest good

JUMP TO THE FLOW BELOW OR READ ON!

Hello Sadhakas!
I have written about this poem before, I think. The above is a line from the poem that first introduced me to Rumi 15 years ago. He is so magically able to use words to accurately describe the heightened experiences of the spiritual journey. It is a feeling that is akin to falling in love mixed with being held by the parents we all wish we had had in a supreme and loving embrace. But I digress (I do that sometimes ;))

In any case, the thought offering this week speaks to a very simple and foundational element of the practice both ON and OFF THE MAT. If you don’t wake up to what you are doing, you stand no chance of ever changing it. And so, we must wake up. Waking up means creating an environment with Self that is safe enough for us to admit to ourselves the real reason we do things. No, not the “reason” but the REAL reason and then likely the reason under that.
Aka: My child has a tantrum and so I yell.
The “reason” I yelled is because my child had a tantrum. But no, it’s not. Let’s go to the reason under that.
The reason under that might be, I yelled because I got frustrated,
The reason under that- I yelled because I didn’t know what to do with my feelings
The reason under that, I yelled because my dad yelled at me and that’s how I was shown to deal with frustration.
Ok now we’re getting somewhere.
Now I am awake and seeing with clear eyes.
Now I can see the root of my choice and I can say:
” No, I want to learn what to do with my big feelings, so I don’t have to feel like this anymore and I want to be able to show my children how to deal with their big feelings”
Armed with this awareness I can seek the support I need to solve a problem.
Do you see what I mean?

Had I stayed stuck in “I yelled because she had a tantrum” reason, I would have been stuck asleep in that loop for the rest of this lifetime and would have simply passed the same issue onto my daughter.

This is true everywhere and, in every relationship, we have to everything. We wake up and we can make different choices and get different outcomes.

ON THE MAT this week we are waking up to how we are actually twisting and mindfully adding it to our shape.

I wish you a week of radical self-love, inquiry and healing.

With great respect and love,

Nicole