Last day on Karuna, the #motherchildSacredLove inspiration for the Love Month.
Love yourself.
"Honor that girl inside you.
Remember who you were before you cared what you looked like. Before you knew the sting of rejection. Before you were told that you couldn't, or that you weren't or that you hadn't. You are still that girl - before the roles, the labels, the pains, that girl lives on. She is the goddess within you."
~ Tender to my Soul, S. C. Lourie
Happy Day to you, loved one.
Day 5 on Karuna, the mother-child Sacred Love affair.
Babies are soft. Anyone looking at them can see the tender, fragile skin and know it for the rose-leaf softness that invites a finger's touch. But when you live with them and love them, you feel the softness going inward, the round-cheeked flesh wobbly as custard, the boneless splay of the tiny hands. Their joints are melted rubber, and even when you kiss them hard, in the passion of loving their existence, your lips sink down and seem never to find bone. Holding them against you, they melt and mold, as though they might at any moment flow back into your body.
But from the very start, there is that small streak of steel within each child. That thing that says "I am," and forms the core of personality.
In the second year, the bone hardens and the child stands upright, skull wide and solid, a helmet protecting the softness within. And "I am" grows, too. Looking at them, you can almost see it, sturdy as heartwood, glowing through the translucent flesh.
The bones of the face emerge at six, and the soul within is fixed at seven. The process of encapsulation goes on, to reach its peak in the glossy shell of adolescence, when all softness then is hidden under the nacreous layers of the multiple new personalities that teenagers try on to guard themselves.
In the next years, the hardening spreads from the center, as one finds and fixes the facets of the soul, until "I am" is set, delicate and detailed as an insect in amber.
~Diana Gabaldon
Mother of Laura, Jenny and Sam.
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Day 7 on Karuna, the Mother-Child Sacred Love affair.
"Becoming a family teaches us lessons in love: there are different types of love, and love changes over time. Different relationships teach us to love in different ways and more wholeheartedly. I'll show you what I mean.
An exercise. Close your eyes for a moment...
... and imagine the love you have for your partner. Feel the size, shape, texture and color of it. How big or small does it feel? There might be an image that comes to mind.
Now think of the love you feel for your best friend. What happens? What changes? How are the images different?
Think of your parents. Notice what happens for each of them.
Now think of the love you feel (or will feel) for your child. What happens now?
And the last one: get a sense of the love you have towards yourself. What changes?
Where love shrinks, there are opportunities for growth. You already have the capacity for it.
Love means connection. When we feel an expanded sense of love it means we're more connected. Where we're connected, love flows freely. We may need to work on our connection with our self or others, too."
~ Elly Taylor (Becoming Us)
Mother of three
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Day 6 on Karuna, the mother-child Sacred Love affair.
May you be tired and afraid
overwhelmed and ready to quit.
Quit!
Start over, over
ten thousand times over
roll out, get up, fall down
break into tears
open in laughter
sing and dance
be silly, be glad.
May you forget most things,
remember everything,
come to know in your bones
with your blood
through your eyes
from your lips
out of earth
deep below, well beyond
you are love.
You are just love.
Amen.
~ Karen Maezen Miller
"Errant wife, delinquent mother, reluctant dog walker, and expert laundress."
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Day 4 on Karuna, the mother-child SACRED LOVE affair...
The Hole
There’s a hole that sits within my chest
I cannot quite explain
for it’s just there and I’m not sure
exactly when it came.
Some days it’s black and hollow
or it’s small and hard and tight
and others it’s not there at all
replaced by joy and light
I want to love each moment
as I watch you grow each day
but some days I can’t find energy
to sit with you and play
From the moment you lift your lashes
to the time you fall asleep
I have to count each breath I take
so I don’t fall and weep
Each task becomes a struggle
and soon I fall behind
which only makes the guilt I feel
more present in my mind
But still I want the world to see
as I walk around with grace
pretending life is perfect
with a smile upon my face
when inside I might be crumbling,
tears just behind my eyes
anxious that my face might fail,
revealing my disguise.
I don’t want to feel broken
and I don’t want them to think
that just because I have this hold
I’m sitting on the brink
“Please everyone, I’ll be alright
in time I’m sure it’s true
but for right now I need to know
that I can trust in you
to remember that this little hole,
too small and dark to see
does not take away the fact
that I am still ME
Because even with the bad days
my life is filled with joys
I get to spend each of my days
loving my two sweet boys.”
You make all of this worth it
you’re the reason for the light
which brings with it the happy days
and gets me through the night
That moment when I hold you close
and smell your sweet, soft hair
when I know I’m all you want and need
and you know that I’ll be there
when all the hurting goes away
as I hold you to my chest
to savor your sweet peacefulness
and forget all the rest.
~Caitlyn Blake
Mother of two.
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Day 3 on Karuna, the mother-child SACRED LOVE affair.
Inspiration for the Love Month!
"Sometimes when you pick up your child you can feel the map of your own bones beneath your hands, or smell the scent of your skin in the nape of his neck. This is the most extraordinary thing about motherhood - finding a piece of yourself separate and apart that all the same you could not live without."
~Jodi Picoult
Mother of Sammy, Kyle, and Jake.
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Day 2 on Karuna, the mother-child SACRED LOVE affair.
Inspiration for the Love Month!
Have you heard of Garbha sanskar?
There is a lot about the life in the womb in the ancient Vedic texts of India. "Garbha sanskar" for instance, is a Sanskrit term that means 'education in the womb'.
I guess we all feel the mother-child connection starts in the womb, or even before that, and this ancient wisdom, based in Ayurvedic medicine, totally supports it. It is believed in India that a child's development, mind and behavior starts as soon as conception. And because the personality begins to take shape in the womb, the mother's state of mind during pregnancy will influence this immensely.
Babies can hear us from inside the womb and after birth they can recognize sounds and some are even able to communicate to us many memories they bring from that experience.
Mother tongue is believed to be learned as early as in the uterus... and because of this many women choose to avoid listening to sad or aggressive music, talks or movies (yes... Turn off the News mum!). Babies can show special preference to stories they were told when they were inside or find music played during pregnancy soothing...
It is even said the mother can heal the baby's karma... With her sweet, soft, inspiring, singing of mantras during pregnancy...
According to Garbha sankar there are even specific songs for pregnancy, composed in traditional ragas that create a particular mood and atmosphere.
There are several tales from Hindu mythology that speak of the powers of this practice:
Abhimanyiu for instance learns war strategy from his father while he was in the womb;
Prahlad was born into a family of demons and renounces evil cause his mother listened to devotional prayers and stories about Lord Vishnu while he was in her womb;
Lord Hanuman (the monkey God), was born with divine powers cause his mother was an ardent devotee of Lord Shiva and ate a blessed dessert meant to produce divine children, when she was pregnant...
And more
Sujata's baby corrected his own father during a class, when he was still inside his mother's body! Well, as a consequence of this he was cursed to be born deformed, and it is said he was physically challenged but still genius, like his mother dreamed!
Yes... The mother-child sacred love affair starts before... In the BEGINNING Before they even meet.
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Day 1 on Karuna, the mother-child sacred love affair.
Inspiration for the Love Month!
from beautiful Maggie Clifford #MaggieClifford
A Letter to Memory
Dear Memory,
If you don’t mind, would you please keep tabs on these tiny fingers grabbing tiny toes? And the small chubby arms reaching out for my breast? Oh, and all the toothless smiles, tender cheeks, the wobbly head, and those beautiful darting eyes? And please don’t lose track of that small hand of hers moving ever so delicately in front of her face, the way she entrances herself with her finger’s movement and the steady gaze, that direct attention she gives to her own development
Please, dear memory, my old friend, don’t let me lose these things. I know, I know, let it be, you say. Just enjoy it and let it pass. But this is too much beauty for me to perceive all at once! I’ll need years, lifetimes, to uncover every aspect of the sweet richness of this baby’s development. How can you expect me to grasp all of it in one go?
Yes. I hold her, I kiss her, I watch her from afar. I gently bathe her, I massage her body when she is fussy. I soothe her. I sing. Yes, I do these things. I enjoy her. Just like the woman who lost her own daughter this fall advised me to. I am grateful. I am happy. But still, sometimes I worry that my body will forget. My memory will fade and this richness will pass on without me. Can’t I keep these things? These precious things that fill my body with joy, these must be worthy of holding on to.
So please, dear memory, my old friend, don’t let me lose these things. I promise, I won’t ask for much. Just these tiny hands. That tender smile. The sweet smell of baby. Just these things. As I see it all passing away, I ask you, memory, to serve me well so that I can remember. Please. I beg you.
Oh I just LOVE this text!
And I don't know if you know but Maggie is our MUSIC Goddess inspiration at SACRED Beginnings! You can listen to her and check her inspiring work in our SB page.
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Let's talk about Love. Karuna love.
"Karuna is the Tantric term for the basic quality of mother-love, directly experienced in infancy and ramified in adulthood to embrace all forms of love: touching, tenderness, compassion, sensual enjoyment, and eroticism."
Did you know this? Sages from Tantric Religion (yes, there is much more to tantra than tantric sex!) called our loving and caring instinct "karuna". And this... ability to Love, according to them, must be learned through physical (and also sexual) contact comfort, by adults and children alike.
So the way they put it is clear: adequate sexual functioning in adulthood depends on satisfactory relations with the mother in infancy (and this can be noticed also looking into the animal world).
Isn't this fascinating?!
For me this brings light to what I felt inside, since I saw my son (or before that, since I was pregnant... or before, since conception... or before, since I dreamed of him for the first time...) this, my Iove for my child, is another level of LOVE. The unconditional one, yes, but more than that, it felt like activating the first... felt like finding the... Source.
Yes, can we say a Mother is a Child's first Source of Love? I am sure we all agree with this one (and I love that it contains several truths and different layers of possible readings in it, from the more down to Earth to the complete spiritual Light of it).
Ancient wisdom totally credits the mother-child relationship for our capacity to Love, to be inlove, to fall inlove (and I say to rise from love also). Everything from this first connection (this beginning) is sacred: the intimate physical attachment, the complete trust, the dependence.
Wow! And this is going to be my inspiration for The Love Month! And for a week, till Valentine's Day, I will be daily sharing on this... Karuna, the mother-child sacred love affair.
Oh please and if you fell inspired CREATE your daily inspirations and SHARE with us your #motherchildSacredLove
<3
