It is a great opportunity for us all to soften around life when it doesn’t bring us what we want. We are so used to making the unpleasant go away that we don’t realize how deeply this keeps us caught in struggle.

When something difficult comes along, to open to it doesn’t mean just grin and bear it. It means watching what it brings up inside of us and giving it space so it can flower and then pass away. Then we can respond rather than react.

All of these parts of our struggling selves will escape our hearts and occupy our minds again. But that to me is why we have challenges, so we can see all the parts of ourselves that are in need of our heart!!

And when we learn how to not run away from the unpleasant, we will then truly come to know that we can trust this process and we will discover that we ARE life.

This brings us back to the mantra, It’s okay, it’s all okay.

Be light, Mary

Starting here,
what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers?
What softened sound from outside
fills the air?
Listen,
will you ever be bringing a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect you carry,
wherever you go right now?
Are you waiting for time
to show you some better thought
than those you have?
When you turn around, starting here,
lift this new glimpse that you found,
carrying into evening all that you want from this day.
This interval you spent hearing this:
keep it for life.
What can anyone give you
greater than now?
Starting here,
right now in this room,
when you turn around?

William Stafford

It’s okay – it’s all okay! It really is.

The purpose of our challenges is to open our hearts, and the invitation is to cultivate the spaciousness that those words invite us into. If those words don’t work for you, feel free to experiment until you find your own.

Another key piece is the invitation to bring spaciousness to contraction. We will contract again and again, but as we begin to trust more deeply the cycle of contraction and expansion, it becomes easier and quicker to rediscover spaciousness.

May we find the spaciousness of acceptance and compassion with ourselves and with our lives.

Be light, Mary