April 24 2016

#4 Joyful Acceptance and Acknowledgement

Trish Broersma Practicing Joy

Joy in the World
The Month of Joyful Acceptance and Acknowledgement

May 1 – June 9

The Goddess who presides over this month is

Gaia

Her Self

The great Lady of Earth, giver of all things.

Reminder of Her creation:

Born of chaos, tumultuous cataclysms, fierce embraces of colliding stars, flung out and away from Her center, the Sun, yet claimed by this Sun forever.

She dances in perfect union, pirouetting around Her own axis and twirling the Sun, just as Her Beloved, the Sun circles around the Center of our Galaxy all it high speeds and unmatchable coherence.

Her action?

To give

And give

And give again.

Her request?

Accept Her immeasurable and ever-flowing bounty in joy with a full heart and full awareness.

Our part

Drink in Her offerings with all our senses until they become part of us, and can be acknowledged as such. Thus, her spin is in our atoms and cells, her greening power of spring in our own capacity for renewal, driving our blood, as poet Dylan Thomas reminds us. Her fecundity resides in our ability to refresh our bodies and spirits.

After the ecstasy, the gratefulness

The artful piece of this month’s attention is acknowledgement.

Here the request is to say thank you, certainly, but with precision about what it is that you have consciously and fully accepted, and now wish to acknowledge.

This roof over my head.

The clothes on my body.

The food I relish

The fuel that warms and cools me

The sheltering trees

Everything we see or own or utilize originated in Her bounty – and in the minds and invention of those she nurtured and helped to evolve.

The way to build the joy

Here’s the key. Consciously acknowledge that which you have lovingly accepted from Her.

Then wait for your intuition or inner senses to “hear” or “feel” a response from Her, letting you know that She has accepted your acknowledgement. Then you have the ever-increasing delight of accepting Her acknowledgment of your acknowledgement. And on and on it goes.

Now bring this same practice to the people, plants, trees, birds, animals who inhabit your world. And pretty soon you will be so filled with joy you become a cornucopia.

Here’s the process again.

Notice something that gives you joy. Drink it in with a full heart and mind. Then offer acknowledgement to whoever or whatever provided you with this joy. Be precise. For example, “Your red shirt gives me such joy, and I can feel the aliveness of that red is now a part of me. Thank you.”

It may be that the person you’re acknowledging has not yet learned the art of fully accepting an acknowledgment. So let it be. Notice however, that the moment you say thank you and acknowledge precisely something that has given you joy – from the birds’ chirping, to the dog barking, to the tree swaying in the breeze, to the breeze itself – and that you have accepted the gift fully into yourself, then this being will – if you wait and listen – accept your acknowledgement and acknowledge that – which then gives you the chance to drink in the acknowledgement and on and on it goes.

If you are the one being acknowledged, please take it in – don’t just brush it off as we so often do – but really drink it in, and then acknowledge it fully so that the gift just keeps building in joy.

The joy of being a son or daughter of this wonderful, so generous Earth. Joy in the World.

The next month is Joyful Presence, and you’ll meet the Goddess of that month soon.
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Join the Daily Poets via Telephone

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