MaXIMIze - Thoughts Have Legs

Your thoughts have little legs that go out and create what you think about. ~ P. Hayes

I am nearly done re-reading Women Who Run With the Wolves, Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD. - a book I have read several times over the last 15 years.

There were several seeming coincidences this week that made me stop and go "huh" - made me realize once again just how interconnected everyone and everything really is.

The first had to do with humor - a dear friend of mine at dinner one evening was deliberately being lighter and finding the humor in things, apparently because someone told him he needed more humor in his life. The next day, I read a passage in the book about laughter and its healing power, which I'll share here (page 336, if you have the book - Chapter 11):

"In laughter, a woman breathes fully, and when she does, she may begin to feel unsanctioned feelings. And what could these feelings be? Well, they turn out not to be feelings so much as relief and remedies for feelings, often causing the release of stopped-up tears or the reclamation of forgotten memories, or the bursting of chains on the sensual personality."

Now, this passage is referring to what Dr. Estes calls "dirty Goddess stories," however, I have found that finding the unexpected humor in any situation can cause the same reaction. The key is the ability of whatever you find this type of humor in to, as she says in her book, "...loosen what was too tight, to lift gloom, to bring the body into a kind of humor that belongs not to the intellect but to the body itself, to keep those passages clear."

The second seeming coincidence had to do with working through anger, or rage as she calls it, and moving to forgiveness - as some of my readers know, life has dealt me an interesting hand this year - one of those cards being divorce. In working through trying to save my marriage as well as the fallout from the divorce, I let go of the veil of anger through which I dealt with things most of my life. That letting go has allowed - sometimes forced - me to feel all the other emotions there are out there, including pain, sorrow and grief. That letting go led to the most recent coincidence between life and this book.

The first paragraph in the chapter titled "Battle Scars: Membership in the Scar Clan" reads:

"Tears are a river that take you somewhere. Weeping creates a river around the boat that carries your soul-life. Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace new, someplace better."

I read that particular passage on a day when I was feeling very low, very vulnerable, very sensitive emotionally. I took the inferred advice, made it through the day and cried my river that evening after work - I let the natural rhythm of emotion flow as it should and released the torrent of emotion rightly, which enabled me to see clearly again and keep things in perspective.

To pull back to the quote at the beginning of this passage, I have read this book several times over the years as a way to discover what it is I need to have, do and be to heal rightly, to heal cleanly, to move forward in life instead of ending up in an endless spiral.

Thoughts have power, more than we realize sometimes, and what we focus on is what we bring into our lives. We need to be cognizant of the rhythm and flow of our thoughts, and do the appropriate course correction in order to move forward in life rather than getting caught in the spiral of repeating things over and over and over again.

What is repeating in your life currently? What course correction can you make to continue moving forward, right here, right now?

The smallest of actions can have the greatest effect.

Namaste!