January 20 – Energy audit

Dear Friends,

Today, I will share one of the reflection questions from the eightfold path class I took through BCIMS a couple of years ago:

Do an energy audit. Ask yourself:

• What am I choosing to put effort/energy into in my life ?
• What inspires and energizes me? What blocks or dissipates my energy?
• What do I most value – where do I really want my energy to go?

Rachel Lewis and Adrianne Ross, January 2022

As a person who over-efforts on many occasions, I find this poem a reminder to balance the efforting with space, so that what’s most important has the opportunity to emerge.

Clearing

Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself to this world
so worthy of rescue.

by Martha Postlethwaite, as found here:
https://www.mindfulnessassociation.net/words-of-wonder/clearing-martha-postlethwaite/

With good wishes,
Andrea