Soften
Weekly Reading Topic for March 7, 2020: Soften
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: “Soften.”
What follows is your weekly reading, dear one.
Weekly Reading │ Soften
Q: What do we need to know about “Soften?”
A: When we’re in the midst of turmoil, we tend to harden up, stiffen in a protective stance as we ready for the next blow, the next bullet. We get brittle. We shatter in the breeze.
This is particularly true if we’ve just been through a tough battle. We know the war isn’t won yet, and there are more battles to come, so we think “I should stay ready, I should stay alert, I should keep my sword in hand, just in case.”
No. When you are at battle’s end, and you have a moment (or an hour, or a day, or a week) to rest, TAKE IT. It’s time to soften.
Go soft, so you can rest, and rise refreshed later. Lay your armor down, right next to you, and let your muscles go soft. Take the moment.
Soften in any way you can, now. Sometimes we have a chance, in a war, to make peace and halt the fighting. The envoys make their way towards each other, the artillery holds fire, and we can speak with each other in peace, see if we can make a better relationship grow in the dust and blood.
That’s the time we’re in now. Let yourself rest and recover, eat, drink, re-member yourself and your mind and your spirit. And approach the one who looks like your enemy with an open mind. A soft mind.
Not a slow mind. A soft one. A soft mind feels open, curious, and alert. Engaged with the kind of intensity last felt while watching ants crawl in and out of a crack in the sidewalk on that hot summer day when you were eight, when the whole world lived in between two slabs of concrete, climbed a green weed.
As you approach your opposite, your opposition, remember that they, too, had a summer like yours. They have memories of simple pleasures and soft days. Warm breezes and silky rain showers. Nights that wrapped them in cool blue shawls of forgetfulness. Days that blended together, the stick thrown in the pond, the hand on the tall grass, the ripe, red berry crushed between the teeth.
So soften, now, and don’t give in to the temptations of battle and disagreement and polarization: righteousness, certainty, rigidity. It’s so tempting, isn’t it, to think “Ah, now I can revel in your defeat, we won THAT battle,” or “I can’t wait until the NEXT battle when we will destroy you.”
This is not that kind of war. This is a war that usually only lives in stories, in epic poems. This is the kind of war that is remembered for decades, centuries, when it seems that truly, no peace can exist on this planet. That you MUST take a side. And it lasts for a long, long time. It may never be truly “won.” We will always be playing this game of Whose Ideals We Choose.
And yes, you must take a side. You must choose peace, and soften, and accept it, in the few moments in which it is possible to experience it. That is the only way that you can be sure that you are in fact bringing out the changes you want to see. No matter what your issue or battle is, you will not win with brittle exhaustion.
Joyous strength. Elated fierce-ity. Terrible truth. We are feeling more alive, more engaged, more Ready to Live than we have in decades, and we in many ways have prepared our entire lives for this moment.
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Every thought you’ve had about what’s Right and True, draw on that now. Find in your own truth the strength to draw on, and trust that it will protect you as you soften, now, and allow the world to go on without you for a moment or two as you recover.
And when you rejoin the battle, do so with a wild joy in your heart. It is GOOD to say what is true for you. It is GOOD to love fiercely enough to stand up for what you know is true. It is GOOD to decide. To choose. To do.
Pain and fear can drive us down, make us feel less than and weak. If these feelings come to you, soften. Let them show you just how important your work is to you.
As you accept the reality: that you feel pain, and fear, and that your battle is critical, you will also be able to find that inner strength that you absolutely, must have.
It’s hard work to live, even a bare minimum life. The energy a human body needs to keep beating and coursing and flowing and sloughing and recreating on a daily basis is enormous. We need a nuclear explosion’s worth of energy just to take a breath! You are ready for this fight. If you don’t feel ready, you haven’t been paying attention.
So turn off the phone. Turn off the autoplay on your streaming service. Eat something nourishing, and go outside and take a walk without a device. Hold hands with your loved one. Pet your cat. Pick up your instrument and play something. Pick up your pencil and draw something, write something, DO something for yourself.
Take a long, hot bath.
Soften, and enjoy, find yourself again. Because when it comes right down to it, those long moments of life are the ones that we remember best, and are the ones worth fighting for, the ones we spend our days yearning for.
Think weeping willow, not lightning rod.
Think silk, not steel.
Think round, not straight.
Sand, not ice.
Breeze, not hurricane.
Gray, not black.
Give yourself over to your soft self, to that child inside who knew how to dream, how to laze the day away, how to be open, and curious, and wise. The child who understood; maybe not all the nuances of the adult world, but at least what was Good and True and what was Dull and Stilted.
Someone (Camus?) once said he tried to “live to the point of tears.” We must be moved by our own lives, and by our own selves. And in order to be moved to the point of tears, we must listen, and soften, and allow.
Wishing you lots of wild joy and a soft bed and the courage of a soft dream to dream.
I am always here to serve in any way I can.
Much Love to You!
Molly
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