Happy Friday!
And welcome to today’s edition of ‘Conscious living with Purnima’. In today’s post we will talk about:
How true learning takes place. And,
Debunking a few ideas and embracing effort of any magnitude
As always, I will share what I have felt through my own experience of life. I hope you relate.
“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.” - Rumi
In today’s world, its easy to get advice on any area of life - from how to cultivate self-love to how to become healthy & fit to how to grow your business. A lot of us run behind experts to help us in areas we find ourselves deficient. But for true learning to happen, we need to walk the path. And sometimes it takes a LOT of walking.
For instance, that person telling you to eat your vegetables, protein and drink your water, has walked the path of better health long enough to know what truly works. And if you want better health then you need to do the same, you got to stumble, fall, question things, take detours and figure it out. But most of us are so impatient we would rather quit the path that doesn't fulfil our desires as per our timelines (realistic or not) than stay on it.
I recently came across a few verses in a book. I kept reading them over & over as it seemed to have a hidden truth. They read:
We miss out on so much creativity and joy when we don’t allow ourselves to be incompetent long enough to discover pleasure.
I found those lines profound.
But what does it mean to stay on the path, and which path should we choose to stay on? Thich Nhat Hanh said something that seems to answer that. He said:
“You want to be free. You want peace. The question is whether you want it enough. That’s the key. If you’re not free yet, if you haven’t got the freedom, peace, and healing you’re looking for, it’s because you don’t want it enough yet. You have to really want it, as though your life depends on it. Your determination to be free comes from your awakening. You see you have suffered too long already. You’ve had enough. You want out. You don’t want to continue like that even one more day. That’s the awakening. And from that place of awakening, you resolve to be free.”
That’s your path. The path that your soul nudges you towards. And once you are on that path, you need to stay on it, and keep walking it, stumbling, falling and picking yourself up. Every time.
And this is the only way of true learning.
Debunking a few ideas & embracing continual effort:
Our world can make us believe that that if we are not doing anything grandiose with impressive results it isn't worth it. Right?
Not Right.
Today, I would love it if you joined me in debunking a few ideas. Ideas that:
✨ We need to influence a million lives to really make a difference.
✨ We need to spend copious amounts of time working out & in self-care, if we need to see a difference in our health and well-being.
✨ We need to do extra ordinary things like taking our favourite people to fancy places and shower them with exorbitant gifts to improve our relationships with them.
And replace them with these:
✨ That cup of coffee you have with your spouse without getting distracted by your phone or thoughts COUNTS.
✨ That class you take for the one client who shows up COUNTS.
✨ That 5-minute walk you did because that's all the time you had in your day COUNTS.
✨ That one post you shared for an audience of 2 COUNTS.
✨ Every single effort you put with the intention of building something positive for yourself and for the world around you COUNTS.
I would love it if you made a resolve, right here right now to never let anybody make you believe otherwise.
And every time you make that effort no matter how seemingly small celebrate yourself & feel deeply satisfied. That feeling of deep satisfaction is something you get to generate for yourself. And you can do this every single day. Allow it to fill you.
Tara Brach in her book ‘Radical Compassion’ talks about installing positive feelings in our brains. She says, to pay full attention to the desired states when we feel them. By repeatedly having the experience and saturating it with our attention, we are recruiting our brains neuroplasticity to create a radical shift in how we experience ourselves and our life.
And isn't that what truly matters? How we feel within as we go about our lives?
Today I invite you to take some time to reflect on:
A. Areas of your life where you are stumbling and ask yourself if that’s a path of your souls calling and if yes, can you stay on it despite the struggles?
B. What’s your attitude with regard to effort? Are you ready to debunk the ideas I shared with you today?
If you feel comfortable, then do write to me about your personal experience or awakenings, if you have had any, with regards to the topics I touched upon today.
2 Quotes
Today’s quotes are my favorite ❤️ I hope you enjoy reading them and they inspire you to reflect:
1. Patience does not mean to passively endure.
It means to look at the end of a process.
It means to look at the thorn and see the rose,
to look at the night and see the dawn.
Impatience means to be shortsighted as
to not be able to see the outcome.
The lovers of God never run out of patience,
for they know that time is needed,
for the crescent moon to become full…”
—- Shaam Tabrizi
2. “What is REAL?” asked the rabbit one day. “Does it happen all at once or bit by bit?”. “It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are REAL, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
- From the book Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams that I recently came across.