Channeling: Be Gentle With Yourself
Being gentle with yourself will help you to remain soft and resilient towards life. As we have discussed, so often resilience is portrayed as a hardness – as a rigid fixation on what needs to be in the face of obstacles. And yet when we speak of soft resilience, we mean that you remain open, remain grounded, remain gentle. Like the earth. Like the soil of the earth that is nourishing the seeds and life which grows from it.
The soil remains soft and supple for new life. If it were to be hard, new growth could not arrive or emerge forth. The soil of the earth is soft and it is strong. It is resilient towards harsh weather – wild rains and winds. Yet it does not fight them. It simply remains as it is – conscious of the changes outside yet focused on their own purpose, remaining stable, remaining inwardly nourishing and supple for the benefit of their flowers. And for this it is rewarded with their beauty.
The soil is rich and dark and full of the material of things decomposed. This is where it gets its nutrients. And so with you. As you let go of trying to control all that is beating up against you or from within you, it loses its power and will, with time, simply fall like the petals of a rose, becoming nutrients for your growth, for your purpose. The flowers then not only symbolize your growth but also all that you have let fall away. It is a natural process. It is a soft process. It is gentle, and it is the circle of life.
You are a part of this process like any other thing in life, in creation. The process of life – endings, beginnings, shifts, surprises, changes, mistakes – all move to and through you like these breezes. They bring in opportunities. Sometimes the winds will knock off petals that fall away to the ground. Other times they will carry new seeds your way. This is the way that life evolves. This is how you evolve, too – by simply allowing the changes that Life brings to you to change you…to allow change to change you, as you have heard said.
Being gentle with yourself means to allow these natural processes to bloom, bud and fall away according to their own intelligent designs. While it may seem at times like it is happening to you, or that the battering winds are some type of punishment for a deed done unwisely, it is not. It is the supreme wisdom of creation knowing just when old cycles must close and new ones must open, in the elaborate dance of life and death, of endings and beginnings.
Gentleness will hold you, nourish you, calm you, soothe you, as these winds rub up against you. It is the inhalation that holds and calms this wind within. For once it is within you, the friction and the fighting and the resistance stops. It is safe. It is safe to hold it, see it, embrace it. It is safe to have happen to you. It would not be happening if it were not.
Gentleness is the faith that reminds you that all is happening for a reason. It is the trust that can create the bed for you to rest on. It is the reminder that it’s okay to rest.
Being gentle with yourself takes practice. It begins with noticing the ways in which you judge yourself, limit or belittle yourself, and with making another choice. Another compassionate choice that seeks to expand you and allow more of your light to shine outwards, for you to see it. Choosing to pause, breathe, and be with how you are feeling is one of the most powerful and gentle things you can do. It is brave, and it takes courageous tenderness to let yourself hold yourself in these challenging moments that we’d prefer not to see, or would prefer to minimize. And yet it is there. And so, it asks you simply to hold yourself.
Hold yourself like the soil holds the seed of a new tree. It is warmed by the sun and receives the nourishing waters from the sky. And it surrounds the seed with the fertile, spacious void of its potential. It sees it as it is yet knows what it can become. And in that space, the soil surrounds and embraces what is with a hopeful knowingness of the beauty which is to come of it.
Because this is how it is. Your growth often comes from challenges or what feels like losses, what you experience as things falling away. These sometimes-painful departures and changes can feel impossible to overcome. It can feel like it will never change. It can feel like you yourself are encased in a cold, dark shell unable to see or feel the warmth of light. It is never the case, but this feeling is natural in the process when the mind is unable to imagine or cope with the experience of its own suffering.
Be the gentle, dark, quiet knowing in this space. Hold yourself. Hold space for yourself. You are becoming, and it is okay to suffer. It is okay to feel anything on your journey. Mistakes will happen and this is part of the process, too. It is important to test your limits and experience the diversity of life and all of its experiences. And it is important for you to let yourself feel the outcomes of all of these in your body: the pain and despair of failure, the aching hurt of disappointment, the confusing fear and instability of the unknown. In the midst of these experiences, it can feel like there will be no end to them. It can feel impossible to get yourself out.
And the gentle love that you will give yourself says: ‘There is no need to go anywhere. There is no need to change. You are perfect just the way you are. You are worthy and deserving of all my love and care, just the way you are. There is nothing you need to do, say, or change to be deserving of my love’.
Love dissolves all suffering; it transmutes all pain. The gentle love of your own heart can hold you like a child being soothed. It is not asking for it to go away or change or get better. It is simply seeing it for what it is, while, deep in its inner chambers, it holds the knowing that you will come through this, that love will transform it, and that you will rise and grow from the experience. For everything you experience is your teacher, can be your healer. With an opened and attentive heart, the whole world teaches and guides and heals you with its love.
Gentleness is a force that does not push. It is an energy that does not ask much. And it is a way of being that will nourish and allow for your greatest growth. Be gentle with yourself. You are worthy and deserving of the gentle love that seeks to bloom in your heart.
And so it is.