Day 222/366 days Towards Self-Mastery.
Remembering our true gifts is like trying to remember who you were before you were acculturated (read: conditioned) into the values, rituals and customs of your culture. It's an impossibility.
There's never been a time that I have felt so certain that all that pain and anguish, the stretching and growing of growing and ageing had a purpose.
No doubt our gifts at birth were there in fledgling form, as essences of truth, as the first rudimentary impulses of a gift that surely needed to be honed and matured, shaped and formed into a talent that only you / I could create.
Without that training ground, the frustration, the desires, the knowing, the in-between tension that is created from opposing forces, that gift would struggle to come into fullness.
The gift that is coming alive in me has taken 6 decades. There was work to be done. The noticing of patterns, excavating for origins and connections, gathering of gems from other people's knowledge, sorting of polarities, broadening of horizons, perspectives to be achieved. All this work takes time.
It takes patience, persistence, fortitude, courage, and commitment.
We'll find a millions reasons not to show up as our authentic selves in the world when we honing our gifts. And hone them we must!
Sarah says it's our gift that will propel us out into the world.
The best advice I can share is to stay true to your path. Do what's next for you. Forget about trying to fix things that appear broken. They're not broken. They are stepping stones on your path to authenticity, to the discovery of your gift.
366 days Towards Self-Mastery
When I considered my New Year's intentions for 2020 I had just one: To allow my heart to love what it loved...and let it lead me. (If not now, then when?)
I've spent months working on integrating my life. To live life more fully with my home life, my interests, my work, my responsibilities, all coming together, all connected. I want to give each the attention that they desire and need, and still have time and energy for the others. That means living and working from the heart.
As I was clearing out my bookshelf over the Christmas break I discovered Simple Abundance. I set it aside to explore it on New Year's Day as I lazed through another delicious day of nothingness. Sarah, the author, says this book is about living in grace. Living in grace I realised, is about Self-Mastery.
My thirst for understanding the human condition has driven me all my life, and hand-in-hand with self-mastery it has been a life-long goal. And seeing as I love to write, that living in grace is about self-mastery, and I love a bit of a challenge, then if I am truly going to let my heart lead, I really don't have any other choice. So scary as it feels, I'm starting out on a daily mission of leaning into the suggestions of this daybook and making a daily post to keep me accountable. If not now, then when?
I'm Josie. You can find out a little more about me here.
Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy: by Sarah Ban Breathnach.
This book is written for the Australian and NZ market because it refers to seasonal changes. It's available on Amazon here if you'd like to follow along.