July 2024: Salve For the Soul

summer:

The aliveness during summer season has a palpable touch that can’t be ignored.
 
This may magnify the aliveness of joy, tenderness, pain, hurt, boredom, anxiety, depression, play, or whatever is present.
 
It can be hard, easeful, and everything in between.
 
But what stands true is that every season carries gifts of guidance, nourishment, and potential.
 
And we have the power to tap into the season at hand for healing, empowerment, and inspiration.
 
This is important because our sense of self or “I” or ego is constantly reconstructing itself based on sensory perception (our interactions and relationship with the physical world) and the deep mind (the unconscious and subconscious).
 
When we give ourselves the time, space, permission, and support to be present with where we’re at in our lives, we tap into the ability to reinvent ourselves or reconstruct our sense of self with the soul wisdom and cosmic intelligence that lives there.
 
This is not always pleasant or comfortable, but I can promise you it is worth it.
 
So, I share the invitation to carve out space, time, permission, and call on the support you need to kindly touch this season of your life with greater presence, heart, and curiosity and allow the inner guidance of your wise Self to be woven into your sense of self so that your day-to-day joy, purpose, and vitality expand.
 
One of my favorite ways to do this is to write.
To write with no expectation; with wild abandon.
To write about the pain, the hurt, and the struggle.
To write about the confusion.
To write about the joy, beauty, and love.
To question ‘the what’ behind these fluctuating emotions and experiences.
To become curious about what lives in these waves.
 
So, if it feels resonant, pick up the pen or pencil and just begin to write and see what happens.
Excavate what lives in this season.
Hold it, touch it, care for it.
 
Regardless of what you find, remember that you are the bright core of it, not the ever-changing form.
 
“Sometimes you enter the heart.
Sometimes you are born from the soul.
Sometimes you weep a song of separation.
It is all the same glory.
 
You live in beautiful forms,
and you are the energy that breaks form.
All light, neither this nor that.
 
Human beings go places on foot.
Angels, with wings.
 
Even if they find nothing but ruins
and failure, you are the bright core of that.” -Rumi
 
What if the belief that we are the bright core of our aliveness and experiences were reconstructed into our daily snse of self? How might our actions, words, and thoughts shift? I can’t help but to wander in this potential.

salve:

I read something recently about ambition and how essentially we all have ambitions rooted in the heart that are unique to our soul’s purpose and one is not better than the other.
 
Contemporary culture has narrowed the definition of ambition to glorify money, status, and the individual (thank you Simone Grace Seol for acknowledging this).
 
But for those of us whose ambitions reach outside of these norms (most of us if not all of us), it can feel confusing, inadequate, tumultuous, heavy, empty, etc.
 
This share comes from Simone Grace Seol and I want to share it with you because it gave me a hell of a lot of permission to more fully explore and honor my soul’s ambition in this season of my life:

“So let’s look at how much more multidimensional the ambition can be.

One form of ambition is RELATIONAL.

How rich are you in relationships? Yeah, a lot of people know you, but how many people know you? How much closeness do you enjoy, and with how many people?

A relationally ambitious person doesn’t stop at transactional and surface relationships.
They invest in depth and intimacy. They know how, they keep learning how to be even better at it, and they reap the rewards.

Another form of ambition is CREATIVE.

We are all creative — even if your thing isn’t what is conventionally considered “art”.

A creatively ambitious person makes stuff as a response to their own aliveness, vs. to please an audience, or to fulfill the demands of capitalism.
How much of your time do you spend making stuff, just for the fun of it, just because you’re responding to an impulse inside of you?

(There are enormously “successful” “artists” who haven’t created for the fun of it in a loooong time. They haven’t been creatively ambitious because they’ve been too busy feeding the “success machine.”)

Another form of ambition is DOMESTIC.

There are people for whom a lovingly-tended, beautiful and happy home is the ultimate and highest form of wealth. My mom is such a person.
Home-making isn’t something the patriarchy “forced” her to do. It is a sacred vocation that makes her come alive more than anything else, and this is true for many people — of all genders.
For a domestically ambitious person, a home is their church, their workplace AND playspace, their exhibit, and their sanctuary.

Another form of ambition is SPIRITUAL.

Elon Musk might have won the “worldly ambition” game.

But a monk you’ve never heard of who’s been silently meditating in a cave in the Himalayas for the past 15 years — and finds the ultimate meaning and fulfillment in that — takes the cake when it comes to spiritual ambition.

Spiritual ambition seeks communion with the transcendent, the divine.

Another form of ambition is SERVICE.

People who seek to help others and drive change in the world because they derive meaning and fulfillment in that, in and of itself, regardless of what comes back to them, are ambitious in terms of service.

That’s pretty self-explanatory, right?

The last form of ambition is the ambition for SPACIOUSNESS.

There are people — and cultures, even — that find the highest fulfillment in… well, not doing a whole lot.

They do NOT see the validation of identity or purpose in WORK.

Dolce far niente.

Leisureliness. Insouciance. The space to wonder, wander, dream, nap, and simply BE.

***

An important note I want to make is that (1) I literally just thought of these, so this is not some kind of absolute or exhaustive list (feel free to think of your own list!) and (2) these are, obviously, NOT mutually exclusive.
It’s not like you have to choose between the binaries of “worldly” vs “spiritual”…
… though, in terms of the constraints of 3D space and time, we sometimes have to make tradeoffs. (For example, you can’t paint AND build refugee camps at the exact same time!)
I believe that each of us has every single type of ambition — in different amounts — inside of us.
And we are called to make choices that best express + fulfill our inner ambitions, even with the aforementioned 3D constraints.
I share this with the hope that it gives you a sense of relief and validation that your desires and yearnings matter and are worth pursuing…
… even if they don’t conform to individualistic and capitalistic ideals.”
-Simone Grace Seol

Where do your heartfelt ambitions lie? Honor them!

soul:

• Hold yourself in compassion constantly

• Let go of the idea of perfectionism, it doesn’t exist

• Remove the obstacles that hinder your wholeness, love, gifts from shining through- get clear on what these obstacles are?

• Let the river of life carry you home- hop in

• Truth always prevails

• Enjoy the low-hanging, juicy fruit (the most accessible points of pleasure, for instance, a deep breath)

• Honor your aliveness

• Embrace patience, space, and discipline

• Draw within to flow out

• How does love want to pour out of me? (asking myself constantly in the joy and pain alike)

• Enough is my true nature

• My belonging is inherent

• Purpose is my existence

• Nothing is wrong with you, nothing will ever be wrong with you

• I am guided, I am supported, I am loved

• You shine when you love

In Wild Abandon,

Ashlyn