Gentleness

When you hear words like gentleness and compassion, what comes to mind?

Show Notes

I used to think of compassion, specifically self-compassion, as weakness.

Gentleness seemed flaccid. 'Be gentle': It seemed like a consolation prize to offer to someone inept and fragile. 
I heard it as a veiled insult.

Be gentle with yourself. (.....because you can't handle anything more than that, you poor, pitiful thing.)

Now I know better.

What is Open to What Is?

This isn’t the podcast I was supposed to create.

I had something polished and impressive in mind.

This is more interesting.

You should listen to it.

A bit of background:
I’d already committed to publishing a daily podcast when I got (very, very, very) sick with Long (very, very, very long) COVID.

So, I had a choice:
I could give up, or I could keep my commitment and include my constant exhaustion, fever, foggy-brain, relentless cough —and do my best.

I chose the latter.

My “best” varies quite a bit according to how well or poorly I feel on a given day.

The episodes are raw, out of order, unedited, with uneven audio quality, You’ll often hear my Pekingese, Bija barking in the background.

Sometimes I talk to myself, sometimes I talk to you. Sometimes I have no idea who I’m talking to. It’s a true potpourri.

And it’s not just overhearing me wax poetic through a stuffy nose about new insights and the insufferable discomfort of upended plans. There’s more!

In between the fragments of thought, feeling, and utter nonsense, is a timely and universal story about expectations, meaning making, dropping all agendas, and discovering what’s possible when we Open to What Is.

Tune in.
Sample a few episodes.

See if you can drop all expectations and allow yourself to be surprised and delighted by something you didn’t know you were looking for.

So gentleness. compassion.
what do those words mean to you?
what are your associations with the words gentleness and compassion?

do you think of weakness? do you think of nice-ness do you think of any person in particular that is kind of emblematic of that?
do you think of, like, I don't know a religious figure? or some kind of like evolved person? do you think of someone like that's been very kind to you?

I used to think of compassion - specifically self-compassion - as weakness.
Gentleness seemed flaccid. 'Be gentle': That seemed like something that you offer to someone who is fragile. It seemed like an insult: Be gentle with yourself.

But I don't think that now at all.

I think gentleness is very precise and it requires restraint, it requires attention, it requires stepping out of the momentum where we make something right, and we make something wrong, we make something good we make something bad.

gentleness is care. and caring takes enormous courage.
it takes enormous presence. because we can't care without paying attention.

So many of the things that we put on, or assign to, kind of the realm of willpower, or effort or productivity, could be more appropriately aligned with the language of caring and attention.