What part of your life do you need to shed?

Posted by Paul Reynolds on Jun 18, 2021 in Blog, Western Insight | Comments Off on What part of your life do you need to shed?

Here’s a letter we wrote to America’s richest woman, Oprah Winfrey.

“Dear Oprah,” we began. “Please buy up all the Pizza Huts and convert them into a network of Menstrual Huts. Create 10,000 or 100,000 local neighborhood sanctuaries where women can retreat while they’re in the throes of their monthly appointment with dying and purification — or anytime they need a break from the tyranny of the clock.

“Let the men come, too. They need sabbaticals. We’re all desperate for a regular chance to drop out of the crazy-making grind, to find respite from civilizations’ crimes against the rhythms of sleep and love and play.

“Men may actually need the Menstrual Huts even more than women. They mistakenly imagine that they can drive themselves on and on and on. Their poor bodies don’t have a built-in menstrual mechanism to cyclically slow them down. And so they mostly never stop to peer into the heart of their own darkness. Which is why so many of them tend to find evil everywhere else except in themselves, and fight it everywhere else except in themselves.

“Just a theory to consider: If men got a chance to have periodic
breakdowns and negotiate in a safe place with the toxic feelings that just naturally build up inside everyone over time, maybe they wouldn’t wreak so much havoc out in the world.

Maybe Menstrual Huts would save the world.”

Our letter to Oprah went on for two more pages, but you get the gist. She has not yet responded to our plea.

In the meantime, we suggest that anyone who’s interested create their own local Moon Lodges and Menstrual Huts. Here’s a list of self-inquiries that could help to guide the time in the sanctuary

1. What feelings and intuitions have you been trying to ignore lately?

2. Which parts of your life are overdue for death?

3. What messages has life been trying to convey to you but which you’ve chosen to ignore?

4. What red herrings, straw men, and scapegoats have you chased after obsessively in order to avoid dissolving your most well rationalized delusions?

5. What unripe parts of yourself are you most ashamed or fearful of? How can you give those parts more ingenious love?

6. What parts of yourself have the least integrity and don’t act in
harmony with what you regard as your highest values? How can you bring them into alignment with your true desires?

7. Is it possible that in repressing things about yourself that you don’t like, you have also disowned potentially strong and beautiful aspects of yourself?  What are they?

8. Are those really flaws that are bugging you about the people whose destinies are entwined with yours, or just incompletely developed talents?

Are those really flaws that are bugging you about yourself, or merely incompletely developed talents?

9. Some people try to deny their portion of the world’s darkness and project it onto individuals or groups they dislike. Others acknowledge its power so readily that they allow themselves to be overwhelmed by it. We believe in taking an in-between position, accepting it as an unworked gift that can serve our liberation. Where do you stand?

10. It’s easy to see fanaticism, rigidity, and intolerance in other people,but harder to acknowledge them in yourself. Do you dare?

-Robert Breszny
PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA

Posted by | Paul Reynolds

“Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi, or Zen. Not any religion or cultural system…..” - Rumi

For over 30 years Paul Reynolds has collected and shared inspiration from a wide variety of sources. Embracing the philosophy that at the core of all these expressions is the reminder that we are loved and supported every moment. This unending stream of inspiration, imagination and wisdom is posted via his weekly ‘Living the Question Blog’, which has become ‘home’ for those discoveries. If you would like to receive the readings and share them with those you feel will benefit, please fill out the ‘Subscribe’ form to the right and Paul’s selections will come to your email every Friday.