Fuel for the Journey of the Open Heart
Thought Offering
The only thing missing in any situation is the love you aren’t bringing to it.
Marianne Williamson
Fight for the sake of duty, treating alike happiness and distress, loss and gain, victory and defeat.
Bhagavad Gita 2:38
Weekly Journal Prompts
The Marianne Williamson quote makes me feel…
Weekly Mantras
I bring love to…
Hello Sadhakas*!
This week is about acknowledging the presence of love in our lives. The importance of it, gratitude for it in ALL forms, and to bring awareness to the ways in which we can continue to increase our ability to share it and live it.
To truly love is a spiritual and noble endeavor because it is hard. To love not for the sake of adoration or how it makes us feel- that is the stuff the noblest among us are made of.
How do we do that? How do we rise above our selfish expressions of love and move into the self-less kind? The kind that smooths our edges and warms our existence and transforms our world.
For inspiration this week I turn us to two masters in this arena, one modern and one ancient. From the modern world- the magical Marianne Williamson put it best, quickest and perhaps most uncomfortably directly when she said, “the only thing missing from any situation is the love you are not bringing to it”. I don’t know about you but that one hits me like a ton of bricks and drives right into the heart of my ego. Because I know she is right. The quest is to put aside the tantrum of my mind wanting to be right, to get my share, to get attention and just be loving for the sake of being loving.
From the ancient masters: The Bhagavad Gita, a sacred text that speaks to us from a battlefield of how one is to live a conscious life even while fighting for one’s life (quite relevant these days). In the Gita Krishna tells Arjuna to fight without attachment to winning and losing, happiness or sadness, but instead to give attention to the quality of the action. In this case- how well am I channeling love and getting my ego out of the way?
The combo of those two thoughts (bring more love and let go of the payoff we are getting) are huge. By practicing these, we can shine a big light on how we move into our noblest love, in all ways.
We explore the same ideas ON THE MAT this week in week 5 of camel pose. We explore the energy of the shape. A camel uses their hump to store water. We are using our open hearts to store love. We are using our open hearts to shine love.
That’s what I want you to channel in your shape. Gather up love through all of your practices and then shine it out!
Given all of that, how will you celebrate your love today and every day?
With Great Respect and Love,
Nicole
*For those of you who are new to the practice with me “Sadhaka” is a beautiful Sanskrit word to reference a person who is on a prescribed path towards a higher goal- and that my friend is now you! Welcome to a conscious way of moving through your life that will give you tools to change patterns that are no longer serving you and that are keeping you from feeling joy.
