Duration
Weekly Reading Topic for January 25, 2020: Duration
Well, good morning, love! I just opened a Reading for you, my newsletter subscribers and here’s what I heard in answer to the following:
What do my readers most need to hear this weekend? What is the most important message to send to my beloved readers?
The answer was: “duration.”
This is the start of a new year according to the Chinese calendar, and this message feels dead on.
What follows is your weekly reading, dear one. Happy New Year to you!
Weekly Reading │ Duration
Q: What do we need to know about “duration?”
A: Whoa. Duration is really, really powerful for us this weekend, and in fact, all through this year. So settle in and really open up your mind, because this should go right to the center of it, right to your little pituitary gland.
OK, this is important, the pituitary, and it directly relates to the bigger concept of this week’s message of duration, so let’s just get a little anatomy lesson out of the way.
Your pituitary gland is tiny, only the size of one fresh, firm, kidney bean. And yet, it is known as the “master” gland. It communicates with ALL the other glands in the body and several organs to tell them what hormones to make, when to make them, when to stop, and how to work together. It regulates some of our most basic functions: reproduction, growth, development, hormones.
This tiny tyrant is obsessed with making sure our bodies are regular and comfortable, and it does its job in a strange little cave, dangling from the lowest part of your brain by a thread-like stalk, and “sitting” in a little hollow in the bones of your skull. That hollow has these wings that rise up on each side and cradle the pituitary, and this part of the skull is called something in Latin that translates to “Turkish saddle.”
So you can think of the pituitary as a tiny little master manipulator that rides your skull like a horse-master, like a warrior, in constant communication with your brain and using that information to whip the endocrine system into shape, holding the reins of your hormones just like a master rider.
And that pituitary gland is working, all day, long, every day, for the DURATION OF YOUR LIFE.
The pituitary decided to release growth hormones that took you from infant to toddler and beyond. When you hit puberty? It was the pituitary who decided to force your body to produce adult sex hormones and change accordingly. When you got pregnant, it was the pituitary who made sure that you were pumped full of the hormones you needed to keep that baby inside where it belonged.
When your metabolism changed when you hit forty? Yeah, that was your pituitary.
And all the changes you see in your tissues as you age at some point can be traced in some way back to this little tiny gland, this pea-sized mini-brain that rides you like a leviathan.
The body changes and grows and evolves and devolves, and through it all, the pituitary is choosing, choosing, choosing.
And that’s what we need to do now, too.
We’ve all been having a lot of change and success at centering, breathing, finding our voice, deepening our connection to ourselves, finding a home in our human skin, reaching for love, learning to accept it as our birthright.
[Or we’ve been having a go at doing these things, and finding them maybe a little easier than they have been in the past :-)]
So. Now it’s time, as a dear friend says, to take the Advanced Course, which is Practice.
Duration is a reminder to all of us that knowing something and doing something are not the same thing. We can “know” that we are loved, but practicing that knowledge is another matter.
Duration means that we must center ourselves almost literally in our pituitary, because from now on — for the duration — we should expect ourselves to continue as we have been.
This is not the time for self-congratulations and resting on laurels. This is not the time to get sloppy and backslide.
This is the time to double down on our efforts and practice what we have been learning.
And by practice, I mean PRACTICE.
Here’s an example: great musicians practice scales, every single day. They go back to the very basics, the first things they learned, and do them again, and again, and again. They play scales every day for the DURATION of their lives. Because no matter how many times they play scales, they still have not learned all they have to learn about music, and their instrument, and the way that sound moves through the air.
Here’s another example: great litigators remind themselves every day of first principles. You will hear them say things like “documents don’t lie, witnesses do, make the case with documents and you do not have to rely on witnesses.”
And another: great cooks know that the hardest dishes to do well are the simplest. An egg, that most humble of foods, is nearly impossible for any of us to cook perfectly without lots of practice, and careful attention to every step of the process, every variation in heat, time, butter.
The world has changed around us, and the body has changed around our pituitary glands … and yet we must endure, for the duration. We must remain constant and loyal to our inner knowing, to our most human center, to the part of us that is still aware of ourselves as spiritual beings with a great lineage.
The duration is a long time, darling, it’s forever times infinity. You will never escape your most truest inner self, the love that you are made of, the love that you are/were/will be. That is a constant. And so, fuse that love, that experience of being pure love, into your every moment, because we are in the advance course now. We are no longer beginners, practicing loving ourselves and others.
We are in the advanced course. And unlike graduate school, or spiritual(ish) “schools” structured like pyramids, we cannot be charged for our attendance. We are in the class, doing the work, for the duration. And we pay with our consistent, diligent attention to the first principles, and we reap endless benefits you can’t get from a degree.
We/I/YOU are Love. For the duration. Live that. And when you forget how, think of your pituitary, that little warrior gland that floats underneath the giant cloud of your brain and holds the reins of your life with a confident swagger.
Remember that you, too, are a rider, a huge consciousness descending into a tiny body and riding for the duration as the world changes around you. Constant, devoted, loving, you.
I honor you and love you. Have a wonderful weekend, and keep those reins firmly held in an engaged, relaxed hand.
I am always here to serve in any way I can.
Much Love to You!
Molly
PS: It’s sella turcica, that’s the Latin name for the seat of the pituitary 🙂
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