No mud, no lotus
Dear Mikey & Vanessa,
One of my favorite books is No Mud, No Lotus by Thich Nhat Hanh. The essential takeaway is that lotus flowers cannot grow unless they have a lot of mud. Without the darkness, depth, and nutrition of the mud, you can’t produce the beauty of a flower. That means you have to take the good with the bad. Actually, it means you never know how the bad is good, so trust that all of it will help you unfold and bloom. Everyone and thing you encounter helps you understand your consciousness a little better.
No Mud, No Lotus also teaches that there is a difference between pain and suffering. Pain in the initial reaction to the stimulus. Suffering is the story you tell yourself about why the pain is there. While pain is often not a choice, suffering always is. Always.
I am as sure that you will know pain as I am that the sun will rise tomorrow. However, accepting the full spectrum of your experiences is easier when you learn that everything you encounter comes to serve you in some way. Even the painful ones. Everything, in the grand scheme, is working for your good. The people you thought hurt or failed you are your most noble and impactful teachers. Understand that like you, everyone in this earth school is playing their role. Trials are opportunities to grow quickly. Heartbreaks are great messengers. Failures & disappointments are the mud you need to bloom.
We make suffering for ourselves when we resist change, refuse to let something heal, or hold on to unforgiveness. We suffer when we have specific expectations that aren’t met. When we can’t let go of attachments to what we believed we were supposed to have or what was supposed to happen. We grip onto what shoulda, coulda, woulda. We decide that this one path forward is the only way we would be happy, and suffer by closing ourselves off to the infinite other possibilities for how life could unfold before us.
Pain may come, but you now know that you have the responsibility to determine how long suffering must stay. Responsibility is the ability to respond. Many things are not in your control, but you can ALWAYS choose how you respond. Know you can always choose a miracle. I have learned that a miracle is a change in perspective. Perspective starts to change when you pause, ask yourself questions, and really listen to find the answer within before you react.
Who am I?
How do I want to feel? Am I choosing that now?
Why is this making me feel this way?
What part of me is resisting this?
What is this here to teach me?
Is this serving me? If not, how do I release it?
How could this serve me if I expanded how I am seeing it?
What do I want to contribute?
Miracles happen in the pause. Miracles happen when you realize you have more choices that you had let yourself consider. When you open yourself up to new worlds of possibilities. It is your responsibility as a sovereign & empowered person to choose what your inner atmosphere feels like. That is how I like to describe the space between your two ears. What it is like to be you. It is your responsibility to dream, manifest, and radiate your best self. Never give away your power of choice. You make those choices in the kinds of thoughts you think and the stories you make up about yourself and the world. You can choose your reality. You may not be able to choose the mud you get, but it is your choice whether you want to bloom or let the mud rot you. You can choose to release what does not support your growth or dims your light. You can choose to release heaviness. You can choose to change. Choose to forgive. Choose to smile. To hope. To fall and get back up 7x77 times. Choose to forgive others because that it the only way you will give yourself the grace to evolve, too. Do not be a victim to change. Shape change. Choose it.
You’ll learn this with experience but I want you to have this cheat code now.
All my love,
Titilayo
