​Inside each of us there’s
a continual autumn.
Our leaves fall and are
blown out over the water,
a crow sits in the blackened limbs and
talks about what’s gone.
There’s a necessary dying, and
then we are reborn breathing again.
Very little grows on jagged rock.
Be ground.
Be crumbled
so wildflowers will come up where you are.

We replicate Shiva and Parvati’s conversation every time we sit together as lovers, as teacher and student, or in a group and seek revelation, transformation, or the insight for change. Shiva and Parvati symbolize the moment when we get spiritually naked together, when our love and trust is great enough to let us be vulnerable and thus make space for revelation to arise. This intellectual merging involves a subtle Tantric embrace of thoughts and energies rather than a physical merging. It is no less an embrace for being subtle. 

The image of Shiva and Parvati sitting together in a grove on the crest of a mountain not only carries the archetype of divine lovers, it also stands for the mysterious creative moment when two or more people enter a “we” space together. In the “we” space, our essences connect, and we are then hooked up with superconscious source of insight. Physicist David Bohm called this process “dialogue.” Dialogue happens when, like Shiva and Parvati, we recognize our fundamental unity, our interdependence. Instead of being in a conversation between separate individuals trying to find solutions with their minds and from their egoic selves, dialogue happens in a shared space of presence. It comes from the inspired, revelatory, transformative energy that shows up when a group of people allows boundaries to come down and real mutual vulnerability
to emerge. 

Dialogue always starts with a question, an inquiry. In their coupling, Shiva and Parvati epitomize this fundamental creative conversation in which truth always comes out of the silence behind words, rising into expression through verbal exploration.
​
How can you be more present in your interactions today?

— Sally Kempton

To celebrate today, the Assumption of Mary, here is a visualization on self-compassion that can be used when finding oneself in a difficult situation. I found this painting in an old church in a remote village in northern Romania on the border of Ukraine. 

Stop rushing, my love. Stop stressing about the future and worring about the past. Stop wasting your precious seconds on this earth by making everything about things you cannot change and things you are not able to control. Just let it go. Just stop. Take some deep breaths and listen to your heartbeat. Be present, be mindful, be right here, right now. Because the now is all you have. There is no need to obsess over you past or your future - the only thing that happens is that you miss the now. So, let go of ‘what if’s, ‘could have’s and should have’s and accept everything for what it is. Sometimes you really need to remind yourself that you only get this one life, this one change to live your life to the fullest. Do not waist it, my love. Inhale. Exhale. And make the most of every second. 

—anniespositivity from soulxsigh on Instagram

Don't Fear the Tiger: The Evolutionary Role of Anxiety
by Jowita Kiwnik Pargana from Prezekroj Magazine (revised)

We find it easier to remember unpleasant events than nice ones, we notice an angry face more easily than a happy one, we are quicker to dislike something than to like it. This is because our brain works like it did thousands of years ago. 
​
Taught to fear As the American neuropsychologist Rick Hanson observes in his book Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence, our brain evolved to learn quickly and draw conclusions from bad experiences. This approach had an adaptative function, as concentrating on dangers helped our ancestors survive. The crucial role was played by fear. The fear of being attacked and eaten by a predator, the fear of other, hostile groups of people, an encounter with whom could end tragically. 

“Our ancestors could make two kinds of mistakes: (1) thinking there was a tiger in the bushes when there wasn’t one, and (2) thinking there was no tiger in the bushes when there actually was one. The cost of the first mistake was needless anxiety, while the cost of the second one was death,” Hanson writes. “Consequently, we evolved to make the first mistake a thousand times to avoid making the second mistake even once.” 

This way, anxiety has become virtually impressed into our DNA. “It is believed that anxiety, as an emotion or a mechanism that enabled us to survive as a species, is encoded in us,” confirms Karol Grabowski, a psychiatrist and cognitive-behavioural psychotherapist from Gdańsk Medical University.