Perfect As You Are, Rising Strong, and Feeling the Progress…

It’s a rainy morning, dark and wet, though it isn’t cold (55 degrees), so that is nice. The Fall that was settling in last week has warmed, making the Pacific Northwest layering a necessity. Shorts under some pants, tank top, t-shirt, hoodie sweatshirt in the morning so when it gets to be around 70 a little later in the day, I can adapt my clothing to the rising temperatures. I’ve even added the somewhat ugly sandals with socks. No socks with the sandals this morning, though. I can’t stand wet socks.

The clean is started yesterday turned out to be a bit more than I thought it would be, even after inspecting the place myself when I got there. I’ll be headed back this morning to finish it up. No biggie. It shouldn’t be a long day and I’ll get to see a couple of my friends. Bonus!

I started listening to Perfect Just As You Are by Pema Chodron, yesterday. I like it. This book feels more like something I should be listening to at home, since it is a course Pema teaches/taught that includes guided meditations. There are parts of the book that are of Pema practicing the meditations, so there is nothing but silence, with the occasional guidance from Pema.

The meditations, and the whole course Pema is teaching, focuses on what she refers to as the four limitless ones: loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. This four qualities are considered to be the core of our beings and something most of us are not comfortable being intimately in touch with because they are often perceived as areas of vulnerability. Pema walks you through practices and mediations to help you become more comfortable with these aspects, to get in touch with your feelings around the four limitless ones, and your feelings about yourself, your loved ones, those you find cause the limitless ones to be harder to access, why, and how to get past that. It really is a good book and the practices are something I want to start doing in my own life.

Though I haven’t finished the book, yet, I am going to be putting it down for a little bit. I have the overwhelming need to go back to Rising Strong by Brene Brown. There is something in there that I heard that has started to cause a shift in me. I want to know what that was. I feel that there was something, or a number of somethings, that I need to hear, again, so I can better…understand, embrace, incorporate it into my life. I think this was part of the cause of the audiobook futlessness I was having the other day. I needed to go back, not forward, so back I go.

I’m really loving this serene place I am at right now. Sure, all of the usual things I stress about are still there, I just don’t seem to be feeling so overwhelmed by them. It’s more than just left foot, right footing it, trudging along to the best of my ability. Perhaps it is a letting go of trying for perfections, opening up to the possibilities of different avenues, getting in touch with what is right in front of me, finding the space to be good with the things that aren’t quite the way I want them, knowing that today isn’t the end of all. There is still plenty of life left to create the life I want. I guess I’m feeling like I have the ability to do that, to accept that it is going to take time, and – here’s the weird part for me – I’m ok with it taking time and it feels like I’m moving down that path. Things are moving forward and I am beginning to really feel that. What a gift.

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