Enjoy your Inner Self

STOP AND REALIZE YOUR PRECIOUSNESS!
What did you do on your summer vacation? Did you take one? ”Relaxing and enjoying ourselves” is a phrase we commonly use when describing our vacations. We’re usually talking, when we use it, about feeling good.

Why does relaxing feel so good?

1. It’s a break from hard work/boring work/mundane existence.
2. We have the circumstances to simply have fun—to enjoy activities such as swimming and boating, reading a novel in the hammock or taking in a movie or concert with friends.
3. There’s another reason that I think is even more at play here; it’s this: It is when we are relaxed that we can sense into who we really are, into our Inner Self– with the dreams, strengths and yearnings of our real selves that desire to be recognized and realized.

Truly “enjoying ourselves” is what happens when we recognize and let our inner selves out to play!

Our #1 need (after physical survival) is having our preciousness realized!
Too often in our current culture, vacation time is the only time when we take the time to be consciously aware of our precious Inner Self. As this luscious August month comes to a close and we shift our attention to the back-to-school-and-work season that follows, consider completing this month’s CSL focus on the power of rest by setting an intention to enjoy your Inner Self more often.

Schedule times of rest for the recognition of your preciousness. No one else’s appreciation of you will get through to you if you aren’t doing it yourself. It’s an inside job! Remember to stop and smell your inner flowers—and enjoy them–all year long.

The Calf Path

Here is a favorite poem of Bill Schmidt’s. He created the form of a calf out of it, as it begins with a calf wandering home, as we all are doing–whether we know it or not. We leave it to you to decide what it means to you—and to our race consciousness. Happy summer!
(For easier reading, the poem is offered in normal text below the calf.)

One day, through the primeval wood,
A calf walked home, as good calves should;
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail as all calves do.
Since then three hundred years have fled,
And, I infer, the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.

The trail was taken up next day,
By a lone dog that passed that way.
And then a wise bell-wether sheep,
Pursued the trail o’er vale and steep;
And drew the flock behind him too,
As good bell-wethers always do.
And from that day, o’er hill and glade.
Through those old woods a path was made.

And many men wound in and out,
And dodged, and turned, and bent about;
And uttered words of righteous wrath,
Because ’twas such a crooked path.
But still they followed – do not laugh –
The first migrations of that calf.
And through this winding wood-way stalked,
Because he wobbled when he walked.

This forest path became a lane,
that bent, and turned, and turned again.
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load,
Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And traveled some three miles in one.
And thus a century and a half,
They trod the footsteps of that calf.

The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street;
And this, before men were aware,
A city’s crowded thoroughfare;
And soon the central street was this,
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half,
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.

Each day a hundred thousand rout,
Followed the zigzag calf about;
And o’er his crooked journey went,
The traffic of a continent.
A Hundred thousand men were led,
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way,
And lost one hundred years a day;

For thus such reverence is lent,
To well established precedent.
A moral lesson this might teach,
Were I ordained and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind,
Along the calf-paths of the mind;
And work away from sun to sun,
To do what other men have done.

They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.
They keep the path a sacred grove,
Along which all their lives they move.
But how the wise old wood gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf!

Ah! many things this tale might teach –
But I am not ordained to preach.

Go with the flow

Consider this poem, deepening and widening our summer topic regarding the power of rest.  It was written by Rev. Noel McInnis, who said, “… I received this advice from a mountain stream when I asked it, “If you were literate, what would you tell me?”:

FLOW
Be,
as water is,
without friction.
Flow around the edges
of those within your path.
Surround within your ever-moving depths
those who come to rest there—
enfold them, while never for a moment holding on.

Accept whatever distance
others are moved within your flow.
Be with them gently
as far as they allow your strength to take them,
and fill with your own being
the remaining space when they are left behind.

When dropping down life’s rapids,
froth and bubble into fragments if you must,
knowing that the one of you now many
will just as many times be one again.

And when you’ve gone as far as you can go,
quietly await your next beginning.

Think in your heart

“The Pueblo Indians told me that all Americans are crazy, and of course I was somewhat astonished and asked them why. They said, ‘Well, they say they think in their heads. No sound man thinks in his head. We think in the heart.’” ~ Carl Jung

Whether you agree mostly with the Native Americans or the European Americans, pondering where the pendulum swings regarding your personal thinking can give you greater freedom and with it, ease. A swing in a hammock for half an hour, contemplating your focus, could be the most productive thing you do all summer!