Meet your world directly

This month, I am in the middle of the Mindfulness Mentor Training with Tara Brach, Jack Kornfield & the Banyan’s crew. So, every Wednesday’s morning, I have a zoom meeting with my peers. The person in charge of our meeting yesterday decided to guide us through a “deep dive” guided practice calling any “negative” emotions to be out in the surface. What came up for me was my anger. Part of me resented the facilitator for putting all of us into something so not expected. Another the part of me thanked her for my opportunity to meet my anger directly with curiosity.

Any how, the emotion that I tend to ignore the most is anger. At a young age, I saw how ugly it could be when my parents fought. Hurricane type of anger that small objects in the house would fly around the air (another words: my parents threw things). I swore to myself I would learn to not let my anger taking over me. Then what I did was to hide my anger away pretending I was perfectly fine. I ended up shutting down my communication with the outer world completely - not only still feeling angry but also lonely, miserable and disconnected. Dean, my partner, knows exactly when I am angry. He usually says, “you would be ninja quiet but I can feel steam coming out of your head”.

Over the last ten years, I intentionally practice to meet my anger and to be able to speak about them. I still have the tendency to hide them when they first start to show up. However, slowly taking my guard down and talking about them has become a lot more natural.

What has been helping me in being able to meet my anger directly is mindfulness. A practice that requires nothing other than pausing to be with what is. For me, mindfulness practice = being present + being curious. As soon as I judge my emotions and create stories about them, I am consumed by them. As soon as I try to do something to “raise the vibration”, I deny a vulnerable part of myself that desperately needs love. But, when I am curious, I get to see, know and understand them better. The nature of the human mind is to generate thoughts, to create stories that, however, could be just fictional. Mindfulness or meditation is a wonderful practice to help me getting past all of these filters to meet my world directly.

Accepting a part of ourselves that might not be considered “positive” is to remain whole. Surrendering to what is is to actually using our personal power. As in the ancient text Tao Te Ching:

“Yield and remain whole

Bend and remain straight

Be low and become filled

Be worn out and become renewed.”

~ Tao Te Ching, chapter 22, translated by Derek Lin.

My new Art book & Free download:

I recently republished the first colouring book in SLOW LIVING COLOURING SERIES In Rhythm with Nature on Amazon. If you are in NZ, Amazon.au can ship to your door. This colouring book contains 45 unique illustrations ranging from bold & simple to intricate & detailed for you to enjoy.

I also want to share with you 2 free pages in pdf of this colouring book that you can download here to print & colour in at home.

Feel free to share the link with your friends. And please do share with me after you colour in, I would love to see it!

In-person meetups in Auckland: If you want to practice mindfulness in forms of Tea sitting & Art journaling with me in person.

• Art & Tea mindfulness monthly sessions at SOMM (The school of modern meditation): Bowl tea ceremony & Art journaling on Sun, October 20th. Join me & others at the beautiful space of SOMM here. $55 for drop-in or included in SOMM full memberships.

Online materials:

• The Grounded Circle podcast - a podcast sharing conversations between my partner Dean & I. We share our insights & reflections on wellness, relationships & spirituality through our personal stories. We usually laugh a lot behind and during the scenes but what we don’t shy away from is talking about the struggles and the elephant in the room.

• On Tuesday, Dean, my partner, published a new article on his website: The Kiwi Startups Employee Survival Guide. What special about this article is that it’s a 13,000 word article created by Dean, Adam (his friend & business partner), Natalie (Adam’s wife) and I. The 4 of us contributed to this article together over the last few weeks.

  When Dean & Adam first started to work on this (they used to call it The Kiwi Startup Employee Handbook). I thought it’s such an awesome idea, especially, after reading through the first draft. Nothing like this ever existed for the 10 years I was employed.
  
  Dean is always taking me on his startups’ journey with him. So I have seen how wild this roller-coaster ride could be. I don’t work in startups, but through running my own business, I recognise a strong foundation for any organisation is the “togetherness”, the human connections. And something like this can help to build that strong foundation.

Love & gratitude,

Sierra