by Maria Popova

Maria Popova wrote this poem as a collage, in a fascinating way. She has created one hundred others too, all named after birds. This is how she did it as a kind of divination: she read about the bird before bed, in the night the words would be swirled through her unconscious in dreams and then on waking reshuffled beside the ‘daily perplexity of living’, into a kind of poem-message.

This one speaks of the alchemy of sadness. Coming from a culture and upbringing where tears are thought to be a sign of something wrong, my heart swells with this opportunity to ‘enter into’ the crucible of sadness. As a mindfulness teacher and coach, I know without hesitation, that sadness, much of the time, is a kind of medicine for untangling our inner knots. We travel through the self-judgement and the tight muscles, and when we find the tears, something shifts and there’s a lift where before there was heaviness. Tears release valves which the rational thinking ‘get on with it’ parts of us like to keep closed. This brings relaxation, letting go and a gentle return to ourselves.

And yet if I let go of professional roles for a moment, I notice that, as a human being, I still find that avoiding tears and holding things in is one of my deepest habitual patterns.

I think this is why this poem is so touching for me – it invites me to where I know, at heart, that I long to go more and more. I know the beauty of tears. They can connect us with the tenderest truths in ourselves, in others and in life. The tender truths of love and loss, of vulnerability and openness, of hurt and of wonder. And under it all it’s the ever-present weave of connection, care and compassion that is touched. Sadness is a path to realness – to our ultimately defenceless position as human beings in this storm of life. But here’s the alchemy – it’s not only this, it’s simultaneously a path deeper into our miraculous heart that can defy circumstance, and that can go on growing into a ‘great globe of being that cannot but glow’ despite it all.

Ps. If you want to connect with the wonder and realness of your own life more deeply, while also embracing the ‘perplexity of daily life’, have a look at our Wonder of the Every Day course which begins in the new year – it’s a beautiful way to start afresh.

Photo by Transly Translation Agency on Unsplash

by Danna Faulds

Wise words from Danna Faulds, ones that I don’t find easy to remember in the moments I need it most. The attempt to control in difficult moments seems to be a core coping strategy of mine, a habitual pattern which always appears to offer that much hoped for outcome… and yet there is a deep recognition that it just won’t work – the thunderbolt and tornado, or even the stream finding new channels are good external examples of that.

So what is there to do when in a tight spot, wanting to control, but to breathe and allow, as the poem suggests…

There’s a practice that was developed by Chris Germer and Kristin Neff (as far as I know!) which places two steps before the allowing, which I find very helpful. Before I get to the allowing stage, there usually is the need for softening, dropping some of my resistance to let the guest that’s knocking on Rumi’s guesthouse door in. Softening to own up to my own feelings, and the reality of anyone else involved in the situation (which actually requires an allowing of itself: the allowing of the reaction to the guest). And then comes the need for soothing, for caring for what’s there with all the kindness I can possibly muster  (you could say, the step of allowing the soothing and warmth to flow to where it hurts). Only after this thorough ‘attending to’ does allowing in its fullness become possible, and often there seems to be layers of allowing that reveal themselves over time… which reveals a new perspective, ‘new eyes’ to look with.

And repeat!

Photo by Michael D on Unsplash