dear gentle friends,
Ah. The holidays — the season of both/and.
Both joy and exhaustion; family fun and family tension; evenings of indulging and mornings of wishing we hadn’t indulged quite so much. And this year, we’re doing all of this against a background of immense human suffering around the globe. And a lot of anger about that suffering. There is combustible energy out there.
And, yet, we all want to connect with family and friends, eat yummy food, and have a little fun. I know I do. We want to cultivate the good and avoid the unskillful, but at a time of year when to-do lists are long, there’s not a lot of extra bandwidth to cultivate much of anything.
We could throw up our hands and swear off human contact until February. Or we could just pretend that things are absolutely perfect, even when they’re not. But, I suggest we meet ourselves where we are, in all our imperfect humanness.
And the practice is simple:
Be gentle in your thoughts, your words and your actions
This mantra is part of my regular morning sit. Holding my hands together in prayer position, I touch the center of my forehead with my thumbs as I say, “May I be gentle in my thoughts.” I touch my lips as I say, “May I be gentle in my words,” and I touch my heart as I say, “May I be gentle in my actions.”
This time of year, though, I need the reminder a lot more than just first thing in the morning. I recite the words throughout the day whenever I remember. They help with both the trivial and the important stuff of life. I’ve been able to short-circuit regret spirals after eating way too much chocolate peanut butter ice-cream because the words remind me that I’m included in the directive to be gentle in thought. I’ve remembered to be gentle in word and tone when my sister-in-law, once again, tells me exactly what I should think/do/read/eat. These words have helped me pause, breathe, and ask whether the action I am about to take is gentle or harsh.
…your thoughts
When you become aware that you’re thinking about something or someone, get curious about whether the thoughts are gentle. If they’re not, don’t beat yourself up. The magic of the mantra is that it trains you to respond to whatever shows up with gentleness, including your own harsh self-judgment.
…your words
Most of the time, you have some choice in the words you use. Words can be neutral, harsh, or gentle. We can be honest without being harsh.
…your actions
Being gentle in your actions applies to how you treat yourself as much as how you treat others. Being gentle may mean that you say “no” to baking four dozen cookies for your daughter’s class. Being gentle with a friend could be taking her kids to a movie because she needs a few hours to herself. Being gentle doesn’t dictate the action itself, it infuses the action with a certain nature, a vibe. You always have a choice about the energy behind your actions.
And that’s all for now because I know that your to-do list is long and so is mine.
Take gentle care of yourselves this week!
alison
