Hello Friends,
I’m inspired to share this splash of beauty today, as we welcome the New Year.
Pausing to contemplate beauty is one of the best Yoga practices available to us. It expands both mind and heart. It reminds us of the bigger picture, and of the best this world, this life, has to offer.
A dear friend of mine lost her beloved pet this past month. She shared with me that, in her grieving, she placed a beautiful flower in every place her companion used to sit, so that when she looked there, she would not see emptiness and loss, but beauty and the renewal of life.
Every end marks a beginning. For every loss, there is an opening into possibility.
Many of us face the difficult task of letting go with much grinding of teeth and deep resentment. Faced with the ugliness of change we did not ask for, change we don’t want, we create more ugliness. In doing so, we prolong the agony of the experience.
In the midst of transition, we have the freedom to choose bitterness, or renewal.
I’m touched that my friend found a way to be with her loss and her grief through a practice chooses life, that recognizes, in death, the alchemy of transformation. An offering of beauty doesn’t diminish the pain of the things we must release. Rather, it honors the process of loss by offering something back – in this case a flower, symbol of life’s beauty – affirming, mystical, many-petaled.
In Women who Run with Wolves, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes of the little crosses we see in the southwest, on the roadside, often decorated with artificial flowers, sometimes real flowers. Like the placing of a flower, the descansos also mark a point of transition between life and death, the point at which a life was cut off, changing the path of the living too.
For many of us, our life path has been marked by unexpected turns. Maybe we’ve recognized an opportunity, only to see it squelched. Maybe there are parts of ourselves that we’ve had to leave unfulfilled; possibilities and talents that remain unexplored. Maybe we’ve lost, and lost, and lost.
No matter what point we’ve reached in our lives, we have the opportunity to choose more of the same, or something new.
We have the opportunity to choose bitterness, or to choose life, which is both bitter and sweet. So sweet.
We have the choice to respond to life with ugliness, or beauty.
We’ve reached a moment of descansos. The turning of the year is such a point. A point in time when we have the opportunity to choose, again, the life we want to live.
Maybe, as you commemorate what you’re leaving behind with the passing of 2014, you will chose to mark a turning point with a little beauty. A flower, a cross, a photograph – the form is up to you. Maybe you’ve lost something, or someone, to time, as my dear friend has. Maybe it’s simply time to let something go so that you can begin again. Let it go with grace and dignity. So that you become light again.
Clarissa Estes writes, “be gentle with yourself and make the descansos, the resting places for aspects of yourself that were on their way to somewhere, but never arrived. Descansos mark the death sites, the dark times, but they are also love notes to your suffering. They are transformative. There is a lot to be said for pinning things to the earth so they don’t follow us around. There is a lot to be said for laying them to rest.”
Offering beauty in the face of suffering. Saying thank you. Choosing beauty again and again. This is my song of welcome for 2015.
Wishing you all a very joyous New Year.
Namaste,
Erin
If you relate to what I’m saying, hit reply to share stories from your own experience. I love hearing from you. You can also send me an email at: radiantenergyforlife@gmail.com