How often do you stop and smell the roses? Or just pause, and take a deep breath, or a break between tasks?
In a world where faster, more efficient, multi-tasking, and accomplishments are so measured and so valued, gentleness seems like a contradictory concept. How could gentleness help me in my everyday needs and to-do list?
And so not surprisingly, gentleness doesn't seem to come easily or naturally.
Yet I see this very need over and over and over again in my clients of late.
The term 'gentleness' suggests to me a sense of ease and fluidity. It suggests a passive energy. Like a turning away from the pushing energy and turning toward allowing. Allowing ourselves to receive the love, the immediacy, the support, the opportunities, the possibilities that are right here right now beyond our thinking, grasping mind. The Universe/God/Source/Divine/Higher Power wants us to experience ease, joy, glory, and the Oneness we are and is always creating opportunities to that end. This becomes visible when we slow down and activate gentleness.
But if we are always pushing an agenda, or an idea/thought, or a belief in a rightness and wrongness, there can be no gentleness here. And so things just don't come according to our timeline, or how we would like them to. And frustration, impatience, stubbornness, and other emotions can take hold. Like a dog chasing it's tail, we circle around the stuckness of the space we feel we are in.
Enter gentleness.
I believe that gentleness is not a passive energy. Gentleness is a muscle. One we need to use, to experience our strength and vitality, to feel empowered. It is truly an active contribution towards receiving that which we are asking for. We must let go of the agenda, or the story, and be gentle with where and who we are to receive the lessons of this moment and the gift of new possibilities it brings.
As a bonus, the more we practice gentleness with ourselves, the easier it becomes to be gentle with others and outer world experiences. If we want to change a situation around us, we must change the way we treat ourselves. Activating gentleness ripples out into our relationships and environments and our entire frequency changes. Our vibration rises and those around us can choose to join us in this higher vibratory state. And suddenly new possibilities show up and it's a whole new ballgame at a different level. And those circumstances or relationships that do not match our new state fall away effortlessly.
This month I invite you to take some time and explore your relationship with this word and this practice of activated gentleness.
Where can you be more gentle with yourself?
...with your thoughts,
...with your actions,
...with your words?
And once you have this practice for yourself in place, you could explore bringing it in to your relationships, your work environment, your hobbies, and more.
...Where can we be more gentle in this project?
...Where can I bring more gentleness in to my relationship with my partner?
Journal about it, meditate on it, go for a walk and ponder, or start your day with this question and watch what shows up.
Most notably, gentleness will look and feel different to each person. Your unique fingerprint, if you will. No one else needs to agree as to what it looks like. And ultimately, making it yours allows you to offer space for others definitions for themselves.
And if you find the monkey mind playing up and judgement sneaking in try saying:
"That's an interesting point of view. What else is possible?"
As ever, yours in possibility.
Rachel