January is a time of year when there’s a surplus of ‘push’ in my culture – you can feel the energy to self improve and make a ‘better you.’
There’s a time and place for goals, for reaching and stretching ourselves or making changes that increase our well being.
And we’re greatly impacted by the energy or motivation that moves us to change. In my own life, sometimes I can feel a violent push, born from fear, disgust, or frustration, that drives me. Even if I get the changes I’ve worked for, they don’t feel good, because they arose from a place of force.
This makes me think of the wise words of indigenous elder Pat McCabe, Woman Stands Shining: “Anything done by force has to be redone later.”
I often ponder this question: how do we support our unfolding in a non-violent, non-harming way?
Sufi healer Devi Tide offers this gentle reminder: “The heart is tender….forcing it to do more than it’s ready to do is not helpful. What would happen to the beautiful bud of the rose if somebody came along and started peeling the petals away saying, ‘I just want it to open faster?’ It’s not necessarily helpful.”
Her words bring to mind these lines from Fruit Gathering, a poem from Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore:
No: it is not yours to open buds into blossoms.
Shake the bud, strike it; it is beyond your power to make it blossom.
Your touch soils it, you tear its petals to pieces and strew them in the dust.
But no colors appear, and no perfume.
You may have spent many years trying to turn your buds into blossoms. I’ve certainly done this. My culture celebrates this violence and calls it will power, crushing your goals, and strength.
As we enter a new year, I yearn to support my unfolding with wisdom, listening, and non-violence. Time in nature, where I reconnect with the cycles of the living world, helps me. My spiritual practices support me. And my creative and writing practices help me.
Through these practices, I learn to attune and listen to the voices inside, to listen deeper for the guidance that supports, rather than harms me.
I think a tribe of support is also crucial. Having trusted friends or writing circles where I can ask for help, get support, and be listened to with warmth helps me discern my next steps and trust myself.
There is so much that alarms us in the world today. There is so much pressure to fix or to do violence against ourselves in the name of progress. We all need supportive spaces where we can rest and unfold.
I’ll close with some words from Wayne Muller:
“Sadly, much self-help literature contains seeds of harm: We are urged to remake ourselves into someone who will be spiritually or psychologically acceptable…We are still not accepting ourselves unconditionally, just as we are in this moment, with a full and joyful heart. A more merciful practice begins with acceptance. By surrendering into a deep acceptance of our own nature—rather than by tearing apart who we are—we actually make more room for genuine, rich, merciful, playful growth and change.”
Or as I say in the final lines of my poem, Harvesting Sweet Potatoes, Who am I to say that I should be any more than I am now?