Be here now!
Happy new year to all you lovely souls reading this, and actually even to those of you not reading this! Happy New year to everyone!
It does feel like a happy new year too, with the new moon today presenting a fresh start and the beginning of another cycle.
We ended our year interestingly, yet another family death and more illness too. I went to bed at 8pm that evening, with the boys, I was done with 2021 and wanted to awake refreshed on new year’s day. Which I did and celebrated in my own joyful way. It was lovely to share yoga and Reiki with some of you that afternoon, albeit online, but still a welcome connection and way to begin the new year, with that sort of intention.
Actually it was in planning that class, that I was reminded of a quote from Jack Kornfield, a Buddhist teacher, from his book A Path with Heart :
“Every spiritual life entails a succession of difficulties because every ordinary life also involves a succession of difficulties, what the Buddha described as inevitable sufferings of existence. In a spiritually informed life, however, these inevitable difficulties can be the source of our awakening, of deepening wisdom, patience, balance and compassion. Without this perspective, we simply bear our sufferings like an ox or a foot soldier under a heavy load. Like the young maiden in teh fairy tale “Rumpelstiltskin” who is locked in a room full of straw, we often do not realise that the straw all around us is gold in disguise. The basic principle of spiritual life is that our problems become the very place to discover wisdom and love”.
I have read that quote on retreats and at the end of class many times over a good many years, but it was only this time, when it felt as if life has presented a succession of difficulties, that i truly appreciated its wisdom. I also almost laughed out loud. For a while now, I’ve been praying for greater love. Greater love in all its guises, towards self, towards others, in the world I inhabit, love. It seems that the Earth would like greater love. That’s become my dream. I forgot though, that sometimes to find greater love, we have to suffer, simply because suffering brings with it the opportunity for so much surrendering and opening…
And this reminds me of another of my favourite quotes, from Rebecca Campbell, in her book Light is the New Black: A guide to Answering Your Soul’s Callings and Working Your Light, in which she writes:
“Believe that your tragedies, your losses, your sorrows, your hurt happened for you, not to you. And I bless the thing that broke you down and cracked you open because the world needs you open”.
I know this, my own experience of life has taught me this, depression cracked me open (touched on in my book Namaste), so did having to go through IVF and surrendering to Caesarean Sections (written about in my book Dancing With the Moon). These poignantly sorrowful and challenging moments in my life, actually turned out to be the most momentously life changing for I learned the power of surrender (to what’s happening now) and the deepened experience of love that they gifted in return. There is always a blessing in the burden, a silver lining in every cloud, a gift to be found when we surrender to something greater than ourselves.
I enter the new year remembering all this. There is something humbling about it.
Which leads me to another quote that fits well here, that kind of sums up all I’ve been reading and listening to recently as I’ve ventured down a Buddhist path for a while. This is from Eckhart Tolle, which writes (and I can’t be sure where…sorry):
“Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? What could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life - and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you”.
The message recently is simply ‘Be Here Now”. Ram Dass wrote a beautiful book entitled exactly that. It’s worth a read.
So here’s to a year of BEING HERE NOW and of greater love. The new moon has provided the clarity to see it all a little more clearly and I am grateful for that. We’re casting our spells the boys and I, and making fires, it’s definitely the year of connecting with the elements!
Keep doing what you can to support your immune system and enjoy living for each moment as it arises.
Love Emma x
