![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Meeting the World
Jan. 28th, 2011 08:01 pmFrom The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.
There is a wind that keeps blowing since the beginning of time, and in every language ever spoke, it continues to whisper, You must meet the outer world with your inner world or existence will crush you. If inner does not meet outer, our lives will collapse and vanish. Though we often think that hiding our inwardness will somehow protect or save us, it is quite the opposite. The heart is very much like a miraculous balloon. Its lightness comes from staying full. Meeting the days with our heart prevents collapse.
There are many things that I could write concerning this, concerning the many ideas it embodies, and concerning my heart, my own 'inner.'
Today, I sit here making the final preparations for tomorrow's day in London with VIF. I've been enrolled in their cultural exchange program since 2007, in the hope that (among other considerations of professional development and all of that), to be able to go and life and work in North Carolina. In the three plus years that I have been on the program so far they haven't found me a placement.
I came into the program just as the global economy did a nosedive, and everyone's budgets were cut, and people started pulling in their borders... and whether or not it was good for the children, allowed their class sizes to grow, not hiring new teachers if they could get by with the ones they've got. Intellectually, I know that. Intellectually I know that it's not a reflection on me... but at times it would have been too easy to just throw up my hands and give up… but determination and love, and taking that big, inner breath to inflate the balloon again, and to allow the hope back into my heart. Sometimes it's harder than others to keep the balloon inflated, but just one more deep breath, just one more try… try again. Yes I know that budgets are still low - yes I know that in spite of what people might be trying to tell us, the economic situation just about everywhere still has not recovered enough for us to realistically call it a recovery, but I /am/ good enough to do this. I /will/ make it happen.
A deep, inner breath that refills my heart with the remembrance that I am a being who loves, a being who is loved, and who loves yet more because of it is the inner lightness that sustains me, and allows me to keep going.
I remind myself of this tonight, when it is – for some reason – especially hard to take that breath.
You must meet the outer world
with your inner world
or existence will crush you.
There is a wind that keeps blowing since the beginning of time, and in every language ever spoke, it continues to whisper, You must meet the outer world with your inner world or existence will crush you. If inner does not meet outer, our lives will collapse and vanish. Though we often think that hiding our inwardness will somehow protect or save us, it is quite the opposite. The heart is very much like a miraculous balloon. Its lightness comes from staying full. Meeting the days with our heart prevents collapse.
There are many things that I could write concerning this, concerning the many ideas it embodies, and concerning my heart, my own 'inner.'
Today, I sit here making the final preparations for tomorrow's day in London with VIF. I've been enrolled in their cultural exchange program since 2007, in the hope that (among other considerations of professional development and all of that), to be able to go and life and work in North Carolina. In the three plus years that I have been on the program so far they haven't found me a placement.
I came into the program just as the global economy did a nosedive, and everyone's budgets were cut, and people started pulling in their borders... and whether or not it was good for the children, allowed their class sizes to grow, not hiring new teachers if they could get by with the ones they've got. Intellectually, I know that. Intellectually I know that it's not a reflection on me... but at times it would have been too easy to just throw up my hands and give up… but determination and love, and taking that big, inner breath to inflate the balloon again, and to allow the hope back into my heart. Sometimes it's harder than others to keep the balloon inflated, but just one more deep breath, just one more try… try again. Yes I know that budgets are still low - yes I know that in spite of what people might be trying to tell us, the economic situation just about everywhere still has not recovered enough for us to realistically call it a recovery, but I /am/ good enough to do this. I /will/ make it happen.
A deep, inner breath that refills my heart with the remembrance that I am a being who loves, a being who is loved, and who loves yet more because of it is the inner lightness that sustains me, and allows me to keep going.
I remind myself of this tonight, when it is – for some reason – especially hard to take that breath.
