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[0:13] Authenticity and Heart Wisdom.
Aloha and welcome to Your Heart magic and illuminating space where psychology spirituality and heart wisdom meet. Here's your host, Dr. BethAnne Kapansky. Wright, the clinical psychologist with a mystic mind.
Hello, hi, everybody. Welcome to Your Heart magic.
This is Dr. BethAnne Kapansky. Wright. And today we have a talk storytime episode. And our theme for it is the grace of being. So talk storytime episodes are ones where I read some passages from my work, sometimes it's published, sometimes I have yet to publish it. And I usually try and tie it around a certain theme and share some reflections on what was behind that piece of writing. It's really off the cuff.
And today, everything that I chose has something to do with being who we are, as opposed to like what we do. So I have this premise that is really about our authenticity, when we're in our authenticity, when we're being who we are, when we are in our heart magic, then that's really more about who we are as a person that is about being and it's not so much about doing. And I've felt for a while that anything that we do, when it can come from that authentic space of being are doing then just becomes a natural extension of who we are.
And I think that is a big part of what it is to walk the path of the heart. It is the shift of focusing from having to do having to fix having to organize, having to somehow quantify or qualify or achieve. And there's nothing wrong with any of those things, I do all of those things as well. But the path of the heart is really more about receiving, it's about who we are, it's about being in our integrity and our authenticity. And that is something that happens inside of us.
That is the inner work that is the listening to the voice of our heart, and is learning to heed the wisdom of our heart, it's learning to, if there's any doing involved, it's more inner work doing, it's clearing space inside of us when we recognize that something is out of sync, or out of alignment with who we're trying to be. And it's trying to work with that constructively.
So that we come into a deeper space of feeling we are in our heart coherence, and our heart wisdom and an alignment with ourselves. So for me, the path of the heart is not what we do, it's who we are. And then anything that we feel called to do is just this beautiful, like juicy, fabulous extension of that. And all of these poems and passages that I'm going to share today are a reflection around the grace of being, and I'm going to start with one that's called Hunter's Moon, I'm going to read it first and then share a little bit of a reflection behind it.
[3:38] Embracing uncertainty and self-reflection.
So this is a poem from cranberry desk called Hunter's Moon. Sometimes it is well to simply rest and the grace of now, allowing what has been to have been allowing what will be to be and allowing what is space to simply be what it is, wherever you are at whether it's the ache of a changing heart, the glass of gold sunrise, the okayness of not knowing the exquisite gifts, a shadow and light found beneath the sapient gaze of a full Hunter's Moon. I wrote this particular poem and the fall of 2015. I believe it's kind of wild to have been writing long enough that I actually have to stop and think about Wait, what year did I write that again, but if I recollect, I wrote it in the fall of 2015.
And the Hunter's Moon is usually the Harvest Moon so it's the full moon that normally will happen sometime in late September or in October, depending on where the full moon falls within that particular calendar year. And it would have been autumn it would have been in Anchorage, Alaska when this was written. I remember sitting on my red couch staring out at this It's kind of gray hazy sky. And it was not winter yet, it was still kind of chilly fall. But the leaves were really like shedding from the trees. And you could feel that change of season. And I was in a change of season and my life I was preparing to get married within less than two months time.
And in a personal space of reflecting on all the life lessons that I learned over the last few years as I was moving closer to this threshold, and this rite of passage, and this poem was this reflection on this core wisdom that I learned, which was, sometimes we just have to sit with it, that it's totally okay just to be in our hearts and allow where things are at. And that sounds so obvious when I say it now, like, should that even be something that we have to learn, but it's really hard for us, it's hard for us to sit with uncertainty, it's hard for us to sit with the lesson.
It's hard for us when something feels out of sorts, or like it's transforming or transitioning, or we want the answers to something we want to know right now. And we know we might not get answers for a while, it's difficult to make peace with that. And to allow ourselves to be with it.
And to be in a space of just finding okayness with not knowing of just being grateful for the things that are certain, like the gold sunrise that I talked about. I'm always inspired by nature, when I write poetry, the beauty of what we might see outside of our window, simple gratitudes that we can find in life right now the simplicity of breath, being able to tap into well, what am I sure of right now.
And even if all we're sure of right now is my dog loves me, and I'm going to be okay. Sometimes what we know can be very, very simple. It does not have to be complex. It's just something to anchor into, and just kind of surrendering into that space and saying, okay, then this is where I'm at right now.
And so that poem was inspired by nature and the fall colors and this wisdom that I learned to really be in communion with myself. And a lot of those lessons came sometime between my divorce and my single years and meeting my husband. And they have continued since then a partnership didn't change that. But one of the gifts after my divorce was that I was in solitude quite a bit.
And in that space of being single, I had so much time to sit with myself and my inner world. And I had nothing to distract myself, you know, we can always find a way to distract ourselves, we can always try and go out call somebody up get online, I mean, there's a million ways from very destructive to incredibly constructive, that we can use self distraction when we need to. But a lot of times I was learning the wisdom of don't distract from this, just learn to be with this.
Learn to be with the questions of yourself and learn to live the questions and learn to make peace with the fact that some part of you might feel a little restless or a little uncertain. Learn what it is to embody that feeling state and to know how that feels in your body. Make friends with psychological uncertainty, make friends with the questions of your life, make friends with all that lays before you unanswered and all that didn't go right in the past and all that you're becoming and all that shit should be. Those are all the things I was learning.
And one of the things that happened in the fall of 2015 as a writer is a lot of the poetry that was coming out of me at that time reflected these little scraps of those lessons and little wisdoms dropped into some of the scenes from nature that was going on outside of my window. So that was Hunter's Moon.
[9:22] Grief, loss, and self-compassion.
The next passage that I want to share is actually called the grace of being. It's from the book lamentations of the C 111. passages on grief, love loss and letting go. This was written in probably February of 2016, I would guess somewhere between four weeks to eight weeks after I lost my brother, and I am in the thick of grief when I'm writing in it but there was these beautiful things that were coming through as well. The grace of being you love how you love you hurt How you hurt you grieve how you grieve, you heal how you heal.
These are the words I wrote to a friend who is also going through grief. She seems to be in judgment of her process, thinking she should be doing better than where she currently finds herself. Most of us know what it feels like to be this person, we often judge our process and expect ourselves to be in another space, a better space than where we find ourselves to be. I know how it feels to be this person. Because I have been this person off and on these past few weeks, expecting myself to be at a different point in my grieving process that I actually find myself.
Once again, I continue to learn that it actually takes tremendous courage and self compassion, to look yourself squarely in the eye. Acknowledge where you are standing, then allow yourself to be in that space, no judgment attached. At present, my process has more to do with being than doing which is uncomfortable for many people. And Western culture doing is equated with progress, wellness and moving forward. While being is equated with wallowing, stagnation and staying stuck.
Doing is climbing mountains and going for runs to shift my energy. doing is writing these words as an act of catharsis, doing is going out, pretending to be present with others, successfully making it a quarter of the time, while the other three quarters fills itself with a considerable echo and my head, my brother's dead, my brother's dead my brother's dead, is the absurdly casual conversation of life swirls on around me. Bing is what happens at 3am.
Bing is awakening from sleep each night, remembering the search reality of your reality, and finding the clench of sorrow inside your guts, still twisting and turning, being staring off into space, breathing, seeking, searching, and sitting with your present state of soul beings done with an intentional stillness, allowing whatever one feels to wash over them and wave after wave. Being is what transforms the soul. Doing is simply what comes next.
As with many things when it comes to matters of the heart and soul in our culture, we've got it backwards, we honor and elevate the productivity of doing while minimizing and missing the grace of being. But the truth is, we often receive more spiritual growth and development, more truth of the heart, more clues to our authentic nature and our moments of being than in the ones of productivity. Courage comes in all shapes and forms. They say sometimes it roars. But I think its biggest Roar is the simple act of being present with another and their pain, or better yet, being present with yourself and your pain.
Don't turn away from it. Don't look aside, do not distract yourself and miss this chance to grow your heart and exponential form. Just learn to be with it. And trust life to take care of the beauty of your becoming.
Oh, I haven't read that in a while. And that line that I wrote there about what it was like to go out and enjoy myself like maybe a quarter of the time I'd even be a little bit present. And then it's like there was this part of me screaming in my head, my brother's dead. How are we not all? I don't know talking about that or asking me if I'm okay. Except I also knew that wasn't appropriate. And that part of going out. And part of how sometimes people would support me is they were well aware of that and didn't know what I needed and didn't want to just talk about it and focus on that. Sometimes it's because they didn't know what to say.
But sometimes it was thinking maybe BethAnne just needs a normal evening. And that's the rub of grief is that sometimes we don't even know what we need are parts of us need different things. So it's like some part of me needed to be witnessed and talk about it. Some part of me just probably needed to like scream and scream and scream into the abyss and have this like inner child temper tantrum meltdown. It's not fair. It's not fair.
Part of me needed fun and needed to be able to remember that life is going on around me and it's important as I feel ready to slowly re weave and rejoin those threads in my life and to also try and honor my process. The other thing that really stood out For me in that passage is where I was talking about just doing versus being and really delineating.
[15:08] Embracing grief and self-discovery.
Here's what doing looks like and kind of listing This is the stuff I'm doing right now. And again, doings not bad, some of the things I did were really constructive and tilt shift energy helped me feel better, we have to take care of ourselves. This is not about elevating one state of doing over being and making it better than it's more about making space for both of them.
But also understanding that when we are in alignment with ourselves, so much of what we do is going to come from understanding what do I need right now. And the more we're making space for receptivity and listening to ourselves, and going inwards, the more we are likely to be able to say, this is what I need, or I think this would be helpful, or to come up with something that we could do that might actually feel supportive.
But I was really seeing how constructive, just allowing for the pain to wash over me was in that moment, because I couldn't shift it. And that piece of feeling like I should be further along. And then seeing people around me sometimes echo that in their own journey, we are so inclined to judge ourselves and to say, Oh, I shouldn't feel this way. Well, I shouldn't have this thought, well, I know it's not good to think this. But you know, these are the kinds of things I hear these things a lot working with people.
And they're the kinds of things that we do to ourselves a lot we are in judgment of our own process. And one of the potential gifts of learning to be with yourself is that we can learn to be with those out of sync feeling states, and know that if we have a thought we feel like we shouldn't have and you know, we're angry at something or we're not being fair about something, then we can learn to be with that. And we can learn wisdom from that. Or maybe we can learn compassion, and learn a way to look at that and kind of flip it and say, Well, I'm gonna have compassion for this part of me that feels this way, right now, there's a lot of ways that we can learn to be with ourselves and harmony and wholeness. And the gifts of being come through in those spaces where we do feel out of sync or uncomfortable or slightly restless, trying to sit with ourselves.
So one of the things that, for me was most valuable during that time in my life and those initial grief feelings, was just creating a lot of space for receptivity. And I think with grief, I couldn't shortcut the process.
So unlike something that might feel a little bit smaller, or less life altering, where sometimes we might be tempted to distract, or go try something new or somehow shifted, I just knew enough about grief from my work as a therapist, and just being self aware and in touch with my own process and grief that I had been through before where I was like, Oh, girl buckle up, you are going to be on this ride for a while, and you're gonna want to get off long before the ride is gonna let you off. And you can resist this and pretend like it's not happening and all is okay.
It's not who I am. But you know, it maybe was something that I might have done as my younger self. Or you can just be along for the ride and really listen to it and lean in and make space for what's happening inside of you. And I many times just didn't feel like doing anything anyways.
And I would find myself listening to music or staring off into space or kind of losing time, just allowing my thoughts to sift and allowing myself to feel and I tried to work with that constructively by thinking like, Well, I'm just allowing my feelings and my thoughts and all of that to like alchemize you know, kind of like when you make something and you've mixed it all together. And then it says like, put it in the fridge and let it sit now for two hours.
And you know, sometimes in a recipe, it's so the flavors can mash or gel, something's happening. And that's important. While it's just sitting there. That was how I thought about that process for me, even if it doesn't feel like it right now. something important is happening. And I didn't want to miss it. I wanted the little gems, I wanted to be able to understand the alchemy of the process and to try and put language to it.
So those are gifts that can come when we give our space to be it's how we capture those moments of insight. inside of us. It's how we notice our shifts and our emotional states and our experiences of self. There's really valuable things that we can find when we make space just to be and I don't think it's cheating to bestir journal out or to be doing something at the same time, if that helps where you can jot down notes and just allow to kind of make a little note of something that comes up. That, to me is secondary. It's a way of being with ourselves, and then using a tool to capture whatever we might sense coming through, so we don't lose it.
But the secret and that is to not interpret it yet or try and do too much with it. It's more observing, noticing, receiving, paying attention, breathing, resting, opening, conscious surrender conscious allowance. Those are the kinds of energies and qualities that we want to cultivate when we're in that space. The last passage I'm going to share today is called bluebird jams and extra Titian's on living. That's such a fun title, isn't it? It's from revelations of the sky 133 passages on the alchemy of grief. And this was written in April of 2019. Yes, dear humans, yes. Just be in the full of your experience. Let it be what it is, and learn to find the music and every note.
That is how you find the joy in the day. Be present. Listen, make art, right. Breathe Your being into your creativity. So you're fully present in your words, others can wait, others will have to wait. You can't always be about the other and also be about you. Take this gray space of now and find joy and pleasure, make peace with where you're at, and the ongoing nebula that is the future, go find a mountain and sit on top of it be romanced by the Earth and romance it straight back, let your notes be a jam, or the blues, or a symphony, or a pop song, or a single key off beaten off tune. It doesn't matter, dear soul, as long as it's the truest reflection of you and your truth.
[22:08] Embracing the present moment and finding joy.
At that time in my life, when I wrote that particular poem, it was part of a longer blog post. And I ended up cutting out that bit and putting it into the manuscript for revelations of the sky. And something that was really spectacular with where I used to live on the island, is that I was up in the jungle and up in the hills, and there was this huge jungle behind the property that we were renting.
And when I say like right behind it, I mean, almost right behind it, there was a little patch of land, but I'd say like 50 feet from the bedroom, and the bed was pushed up against the windows, and they were really low windows, there was no headboard, right? It was like right up against that. And they were screened in and the windows are always open for the air to come through.
So it was kind of like glamping is how I used to think about it like I'm glamping right now, because it was such an open window space. And this chunk Hall. And this huge ravine was you know, 50 feet or something like that, from where we were sleeping, we would have experienced this sometimes where we wake up in the night and wild pigs would be eating the bushes right underneath the bushes like that. We're right underneath the window where we were sleeping.
And it's like, oh, there's a wild boar 10 feet from me. And the only thing separating us is this screen. That's amazing. So it was such a unique time in life and April on Kawaii is where a lot of the birds come back and we have birds year round, but there's definitely ones that will migrate back during the spring into summer months. And something that was really cool about where we lived is right around April is when I'd really start to notice it's like the volume would turn up on the roosters waking us up the birds, the noises in the jungle.
I remember sometimes waking up to this massive symphony of bird sounds and roosters crowing and chickens clucking and whatever else was living in that jungle. And thinking like this is a once in a lifetime space that you're in. You will probably never ever live this close to this huge patch of jungle again. Just savor this like this feels like something that people go to a rainforest and they pay money to wake up with like this is their alarm clock and their backyard. And the day that I wrote this, we've been woken up to something very similar to that.
And when I was writing my blog on where I was at in April, the sound of the birds really impacted me and so what I just read was kind of this reflection of if the birds could speak to me, this is what they would say. And it was very much about your beautiful and okay exactly where you're at right now. Sing whatever song that you've been given to sing, sing your one note, sing off tune, sing the symphony, if you have it if things feel half composed right now, or like you are having to scrap the whole thing that you're working on and start over again, then sing that it doesn't matter, do your human, just do you and be okay and find the good and day and find the joy in the moment.
And the lessons on being that I was learning at that time in my life had so much to do with trying to figure out this puzzle of why did I come to kawaii? You know, what called me here? What's my sole purpose? How am I meant to put that work out into the world and I had all these kind of half ideas. And things that I'd started or tried and nothing was gelling are really coming into clarity of vision.
[25:53] Radical acceptance and love for oneself, even during difficult times.
So I had been sitting with so many questions of myself for so long. And I was learning that I was going to be invited to grapple with those longer and sit with them some more, I was actually about to go into a season of a lot of being, and a lot of being with some very uncomfortable feeling states. But for that day, in that moment, there was just this beautiful gift of being in the now.
And that is something that I am a big believer and is no matter how out of sorts we feel. I work really hard at trying to come back to a space of how can I be okay with that now? How can I make peace with that now? How can I find the joy in a right now? How can I be grateful right now, if I can't access those feeling states and I'm really in a slump? Then maybe I just might ask myself, How can I love myself in this messy human space and just find acceptance, radical acceptance, right, this is where I am today.
This is as good as it's gonna get. If I can find radical acceptance, I can make peace with it. And then I can move through it faster, and come back to a space of feeling more peaceful and starting to feel a little bit more inspiration or motivation or wisdom to flow again. So I can feel more grounded, and feel more sure of myself and come into a more peaceful heart space, and hopefully kind of look up and lift up and feel like I'm still on the path even when I feel totally lost.
So that is one of my core philosophies that I always try and live by and I bring it into my work quite a bit. And that is finding that radical acceptance and love for where we're at. And I believe in that. But I also believe that it helps us to get to a space of being able to look at the positive and access the good faster than if we deny those hard feeling states. So many gifts to be found and the grace of being. Thank you so much for exploring some of them with me today and this episode of Your Heart magic.
Next week we will be back with a new episode we are continuing our archetypes of the Tarot series and we're talking about the card temperance. And the meantime have an amazing week. Be well be love, be you and be magic.
You've been listening to your heart magic with Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright. Tune in next week for a new episode to support and empower your life