Harvesting Humility and Seeding Holy Chutzpah
Hello Courageous Souls,
Have you fallen in love with your humanness yet?
Can you let your light shine despite your vulnerabilities?
As we all know, this is a process, not an event.
Last week I gave a speech on ritual that did not meet my internal standards. That night I dreamt that I had a stain on my clothes, which a dry cleaner informed me was permanent.
We all have what feel like “permanent stains.” We have been marked, or initiated by life.
If these “stains” stop us from taking risks, than they continue to feel like something we wish to rid ourselves of.
If on the other hand, we bring them with us as we walk forward, they begin to feel more like warrior marks than like stains.
How we hold our experience is very impactful.
Consider the word humility, which comes from the Latin root humus, meaning, from the earth, or low. When we try to rise above our humanness, we abandon our vulnerabilities, and therefore the ground of our wholeness.
However, when we humble ourselves by accepting the fullness of who we are, vulnerabilities and strengths alike we do grow, and we do rise, just not above.
We rise like a well-rooted plant that reaches for the sun, while deepening its connection to the earth.
How can we learn from nature? How can we grow down and up at the same time?
By taking risks!
When we do this, we grow down because we are humbled by risk taking.
We also grow up because we step more fully into our potential.
Taking risks allows us to harvest humility, while seeding holy chutzpah.*
For those of you who are seeking support on this humbling and chutzpah building journey of calling, I invite you to my upcoming event:
The Women’s Courage Circle
on October 20th at IONS in Petaluma.
Click here to learn more or to register.
Or call (415) 458-8321 for a free 20-minute consultation to help you decide.
And now for your quarterly,
Ritual for Change:
1. Choose a risk that you have been meaning to take but have postponed, for fear of exposing your stains.
2. Go to a place in nature that feels nurturing and supportive.
3. Find a posture that feels humble, perhaps low to the earth. Tell a being on the land your fears. Expose your stains.
5. Allow yourself to be with this. Give yourself this opportunity to love your vulnerabilities, rather than trying to rise above them.
6. Open to anything that wants to transpire here. This is your ritual. I cannot give you a script for this part.
7. When you are ready, find something from this place that would feel comforting to have with you during your next risk in the world. If permission is granted, bring it with you.
8. Before you take a risk in the world, reconnect with this place, and with this object, as well as your own earth body.
9. Remember no matter how the risk goes, you have embraced your humanity, and grown one more leaf on your holy chutzpah tree.
We are all in this together.
Blessings, Aninha
P.S. I had the honor of writing an article on Women and Ritual for the October women’s issue of the Common Ground Magazine. I hope you enjoy it.
*Thanks to Estelle Frankel for the term
“holy chutzpah.”
