#8 Joyful Transformation
Joy in the World
The Month of Joyful Transformation
October 8 – November 16
The Goddess who presides over this month is
Kuan Yin
She who hearkens to the cries of the world.
Call Her, the assurance is, and She will come. She will listen and she will understand.
She is present to suffering and need, and She pays profound attention.
By Her presence and Her listening so deeply, with all the potency of Her active compassion, she offers a way to transform suffering.
To transform is to:
Change dramatically;
Undergo total change;
Convert something to different energy.
Her work is the subtle one of converting the energy of our suffering. We can trust Her to hear our cries, and to be fully present to our pain. That compassionate understanding begins the movement toward releasing the energy of pain and transmuting it into something new. That something new is the opening to authentic active compassion. For ourselves and for all beings.
Here is a process.
When you become aware of suffering,
1) Name it. Is it a sense of loneliness, or physical pain, or loss, or sorrow, or anguish.
2) Call Her. Make an offering: a flower, a leaf, an overflowing heart. This connects you to Her.
3) Express the suffering. Out loud, in words, or music, or tears, or cries.
4) Listen. Wait for an internal response that assures you She has hearkened to your cries, and perhaps offered you a word or an image.
5) Request Her aid in making a heart-centered decision: for example, to pray for others feeling this pain; to be gentle with yourself; to write a poem or an essay expressing the pain.
6) Let your hand touch something your eyes love, as the mystic Mirabai suggests.
Her request?
Call. Just call. As the song goes, She is the “bridge over troubled waters.”
Our part
Learn to listen as She does, with the ears of the heart. To ourselves, to our friends, to the cries of the world. Pay intimate attention to what we hear. Just that will help begin the conversion of suffering into something new. Something that holds the possibility of joyful aliveness.
The journey of transformation is toward more authentic joy. And with it more aliveness. In spite of everything, joy is. Kuan Yin is the Lady who can take us there.
Joy in the World
The next month is Joyful Service, and you’ll meet the Goddess of that month soon.
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The Lady’s Year of Joy: The Calendar
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