If We Really Want to Be Great, Instead of Building Walls, Let’s Bring ’Em Down.
Ignorance makes the heart grow colder. You’ve got a tender heart and you’re wired to feel deeply. Openness isn’t weakness. It’s your potency to maintain.
Sometimes you catch the emotion of another. Other times one arises within. Vulnerability does not equal powerlessness. You can acknowledge the feeling and then choose whether or not to engage with it. But you’ve got to recognize it first.
Authenticity is your connection to the Universe. You enjoy feeling good, but there’s nothing wrong with you for feeling fear, anger or the host of other emotional gravitational forces. You just can’t let them draw you into orbit, away from the current moment.
Fear happens. Frequently, you beat yourSelf up for feeling it. You get angry with yourSelf. Sometimes even disgusted. This is simply fear reproducing itself in other forms. Trying to turn you into a fear factory. Distracting you from the current moment — from your mindfulness that threatens the infection.
You’re walking around in an emotional laboratory all day, everyday. It’s an opportunity. Feel something? Find out why. Break it down. Ask, “What’s really going on here?” Mindfulness is asking this question, and then cultivating the will and presence to decide whether or not you choose to engage.
You can’t stop the fear until you feel it. Closing your heart is ultimately an act of fear. It’s a sacrifice of emotion due to fearing the feeling. Isolate yourSelf from feeling more and you allow fear to take over. Become mindful to see more, not feel less.
If all you know is sweetness and light, you’re out of touch with your Brothers and Sisters. How will you understand them?
Make It Count: Transform Hurt into Insight
Hard-heartedness is indiscriminate — you don’t feel pain, but you also don’t feel anything else. Stub your emotional toe? You didn’t feel it. The emotional toe gets infected? You still don’t feel it. But Ignorance of an infection doesn’t mean it goes away. It just means that the infection’s been left untreated, so that it can become something worse.
What started out as a simple wound can fester if you leave it untreated. Whatever shadow you don’t transform still exists. Unless you plan to become hard-hearted forever, shadow will be there waiting for you, when you return to tender-heartedness. But it will be stronger. If you don’t transform the shadow, whom do you think will?
Ignorance isn’t your bag, or pretending that life is something it’s not. The path is bumpy, but this is how you grow. If all you know is sweetness and light, you’re out of touch with your Brothers and Sisters. How will you understand them? If you can’t understand, what happens to empathy? How will you be able to help? Your soul needs the seasoning that your path brings.
Bumps in the road are simply part of the road, not something separate and different. Ever been driving late at night, drowsy, and run over the bumps on the double yellow line to return to alertness — or even realize that perhaps you should find a motel and pull over to rest up for the good of all? Those bumps serve a purpose — they’re supposed to be noticed and understood.
Pain is a signal that something needs to be addressed. It’s not fun, but fun’s not its purpose. Feel it, don’t push it away. Instead of ignoring it, transform it into a signal — the Time-To-Become- Mindful-Signal. There’s something going on, and you have an opportunity to understand it. Perhaps this insight will be required to help another. Transform the pain through transparency, and turn it into value. Make it count.
Numb can seem attractive — no sadness, no nerves — until you notice that you don’t feel anything else either. No butterflies or joy.
Emotional Armor’s A 2-Way Blockade
Loving goes with being loved. When nothing gets in, you’re turning away love as well. This blockade goes both ways — you can’t touch the infinite, either. Wall yourSelf off from love and you become isolated from the inspiration and creativity that flow from it.
You wouldn’t choose to grasp a weight dragging you to the bottom of the ocean, away from air and light, to a place where pressures crush, would you? What if you didn’t notice that it was your own hands holding onto the weight? You’d want freedom, but wouldn’t see your chance. Recognize that it’s you holding on, and it becomes your choice. Hands may cramp from holding on tight, for too long. Release can be painful — but you can let go before sinking further, and buoyancy carries you back to life, air, and light. It’s how you’re built.
You’ve been there, unable to reconcile, stewing in your own juices. It can all seem so unfair sometimes, so you close yourSelf off — girded in emotional armor. It strikes the appearance of taking control, but it’s really fear in the driver’s seat. The fear factory isolates. It doesn’t want you to open up, or realize that you have a choice. So fear distracts you with the unfairness of it all, singing a Siren’s song of numbness.
Numb can seem attractive — no sadness, no nerves — until you notice that you don’t feel anything else either. No butterflies or joy. Make it meaningful and feel the love.
Serendipity is a road sign telling you that you’re still traveling along the road you intended.
Faith in YourSelf, Openness and Letting Go
How do you let go? You’ve already taken the first and most difficult step: recognition that you’re holding onto, rather than imprisoned by, whatever emotional weight’s carrying you away. Now it’s your choice. Openness is a part of the Serendipity practice, alongside purpose and mindfulness.
First, you’ve gotta have faith. Yeah, it’s a loaded term, but whether you’re deeply spiritual, or deeply atheistic, you still know faith. You experience faith each day, throughout your day. You don’t know that cross-traffic will stop at their red light when you’re travelling through an intersection, but you go with the green anyway. No fear, just faith, and you move onto the next part of the road. It’s not the traffic laws, the cars themselves, or your expert driving ability — it’s faith in the Unknown Other Drivers that allows you to proceed without fear. There’s no proof of their vision, knowledge of the law, lack of homicidal traffic tendencies, or the multitude of other factors that could spark fight or flight in your lizard brain. You believe without proof, and release fear. Your faith, in Unknown Other Drivers in this case, enables openness while driving.
The faith that fuels Serendipity is faith in your essential nature as part of the Universe. You and the Universe unfold together. There’s no cosmic force that has it in for you. The Universe itself unfolds in a benign to benevolent way. You go where the Universe, which is also you, sends you, and although you might not yet see the “why,” you’re right where you’re supposed to be. The direction you face is forward, towards value-creative opportunity. In each moment, you can live into purpose in ways both great and small. This reinforces the inherently meaningful nature of life. Now, become mindful in the current moment and see meaning rather than fear.
Serendipity is a road sign telling you that you’re still traveling along the road you intended. Open to the delightful and unexpected and let it help you let go.
When you realize that the only barriers are the ones you impose, you can choose liberation from self-imposed isolation.
Break Out of Self-Isolation and Into Your Beautiful Life
Want to break out of self-isolation and break into seeing the beauty? Honor the wisdom of those closest to you. Let their healing vibrations penetrate. You’re both loving and loved. It doesn’t take a world-renowned stranger to bestow insight that liberates.
Relax into an exercise that opens. If you believe in spirit, ask yourSelf, “What’s the barrier between spirit and mind?” Can’t name it, can you?
Now ask yourSelf, “What’s the barrier between mind and body? Between body and everything else?” Skin? Air? Is there a barrier your skin and the air? Still can’t name it, can you?
When you realize that the only barriers are the ones you impose, you can choose liberation from self-imposed isolation. This is what it means to see yourSelf as an essential expression of the Universe. You’re not only tapped into something that big — it’s your authentic Self.
Realization becomes faith in the authentic value that’s yours to give. Through this faith, you come to recognize the authentic value of others as well. Unleash value into the world when you inspire others to believe in their own authentic wisdom, by honoring it in them. Now you’re living into purpose.
Demonstrating trust is fundamental to a beautiful life. What’s it feel like when someone shows trust in you? It can become your inspiration to greet each day. Show your trust and let them know how special they are. Love is an infinite resource deep down in you, and you have the power to give and give — if you so choose. Those you love can become beauty itself. Unleash that beauty when you honor their wisdom.
Shadow thrives in isolation, when you lock yourSelf in with the pain, and choose to suffer.
Bring It Down: Walled Off, You Hurt YourSelf
Even with your heart closed up tight, you can still hurt yourSelf. You experience both shadow and light to feed the growth of your ability and chance to help. Cut yourSelf off from wisdom and opportunity and you deny yourSelf, and the Universe, the beauty of your purpose and fulfillment. Want to take action? Transform the shadow.
Shadow thrives in isolation, when you lock yourSelf in with the pain, and choose to suffer.
Emotional pain doesn’t have to become suffering. You have the power to recognize the pain as a signal to become mindful, rather than a feeling to fear. Transform the shadow into something that assists in value-creation. Right here, right now. Make it your signal to ask, “What’s really going on here?” There’s so much to take in, you need every reminder you can get.
Mindfulness opens your eyes. Now you can see what’s happening. But wait, there’s more. It’s also within your power to create what you’re watching. Everyday, you can set an intention. Commit to the value-creative. Purpose. Open arms. Inclusion. Collaboration. When you look at your garden, you can watch the life and beauty thriving due to your own efforts.
There’s nothing wrong with your tender heart. Your ready capacity to touch love’s a good thing. Walled off, it can seem like there’s a hole to fill inside, and so you chase endless distractions of greater and greater intensity to fill it. Know what? The hole can’t be filled because it doesn’t exist. All the work to fill that hole is the biggest distraction. Refocus your energy.
Openness is a practice. You can protect yourSelf from the slings and arrows of others — it’s true. But, when you don’t feel, you’re prevented from the authentic value that’s yours to give. Instead of lending a hand in building the wall, bring it down Serendipity Warrior.
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This is Tao of Yummi, Sutra 49. We publish the full 6-frame strip of conscious cartoonery, once a week, here on The Coffeelicious.
The Tao of Yummi is a serial conscious cartoon strip about finding your way to the delightful and unexpected through purpose and mindfulness. If you’re living into purpose and mindful in the moment, you’ll open to the infinite love, inspiration and creativity that is already yours.
