Very often we come to practice, as with everything in life, with very strong ideas about what should happen and where we should be going. We know the definition of how to be and especially how we ‘should’ be. It usually involves the idea of how we should be different, ‘I should be more mindful’, ‘I shouldn’t be so anxious’, ‘I should practice’. Often these ideas are adding even more fuel to the fire of self judgment and stress and are simply using the words of practice to do so. We can address this in many different ways such as bringing attention to these habits or to cultivate self compassion. Another technique that is really alive for me at the moment is the idea of the Wild Card Inside. It’s the sense of intuition and feeling into what we might need to do in each moment that is not about a preconceived notion of how we should be but an honouring of the universal energy and force within us and how it might want to express in each moment. Often this is playful, creative and wild and very rarely does it make sense according to some preordained notion about what we should be, could be or ought to have been. So how do we access the wild card inside? Simply by trusting in our intuitive sense of what feels beautiful and nourishing for us in this moment. What feels like it is about spontaneity and deeper fulfillment, not about distracting ourselves for what we are feeling but finding a way to bring that feeling into our consciousness through playful expression. Mindfulness and meditation are often presented as science, yet it is a disservice to not also see them as the expression of the art and dance of life and the innate universal primordial playful energy. What if it didn’t have to make sense?
Wild Card
There’s a wild card inside
Beyond reason and change
Beyond the grasp of wind and rain
Beyond the signs of the cosmos
Beyond pleasure and pain
Before shapes become form
Before the wild becomes tame
It answers every call I make
Like a roar from the depths
Nothing from which to be afraid
Nothing with which to be shamed
No spaces where it can’t locate
No ideas it must placate
It lives beyond age
Simple and strong and touching the earth
My witness
My sage
My unsurpassed and accessible rage
That does not harm but simply plays
Beyond time and place
Loving to be and all that it sees
Yet fierce in its power and grace
It laughs at the thoughts that claim to know the way
It’s my guide
My ghost
My effort
My interest
My only true place
Theres a wild card inside
Beyond form and space
I sit back into it and let it leads the way
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