Today I invite you to a day of gentleness. This year has sparked a great deal of emotional upheaval with the weather, as well as daily news that shouts for attention and sparks anger, sadness, and fear as a collective backdrop of daily life. While there really aren't shortcuts to finding lasting peace and stability in changing times, we can nourish ourselves with rest. I am not referring to sleeping well, but rather to a kind of emotional rest from intensity. This is not fighting with your feeling states or avoiding doing what you need to get done. It is about giving up the harsh and the hard, in order to cultivate the gentle and the soft. This is an ancient Taoist Principle from Lao Tzu.
"Water is the softest and most yielding substance. Yet nothing is better than water, for overcoming the hard and rigid, because nothing can compete with it. Everyone knows that the soft and yielding overcomes the rigid and hard, but few can put this knowledge into practice... " (J.H. McDonald tr.)
I am suggesting you let today be a gentle day, with an attitude of gentleness, first toward yourself and then with a taste of that, toward whatever you may encounter. The subtlety of such a practice quickly reveals itself, when you apply it to your spiritual practice. Can meditation be less rigid...more fluid? What about affirmations or prayer, can prayer be softened?--A softer affirmation, and a gentle approach to the avoided chore, or encounter. In the Taoist text, I Ching, (Book of Changes), the hexagram named The Gentle, is also The Penetrating. The idea here is again, the more you wrestle and try to force your own understanding of a situation or a relationship, the more you remain blocked. Like the metaphor of water that eventually wears through rock, a gentler, softer attempt to spiritually understand an experience or life issue will open consciousness. Gentleness cannot be forced. But if you let your emotions rest (anger, fear/urgency, sadness, even guilt) and trust a softer Sunday, you can know a new peace. (Susan Nettleton)
from Joy Harjov: https://poets.org/poem/eagle-poem