I had created what I thought was a pretty good balance between my Kung Fu requirements and personal/family based requirements for the year. Over the past two and a half months I have given a fair bit of thought to why I had stalled for so long and also why it didn't really bother me all that much. The most troubling part was that I
wasn't really troubled by my lack of activity and that has led me to ask why?
The catalyst to discovering the reasons why started with the word anchor. During a chat with Sifu Brinker, he had at one point used the word anchor to describe the I Ho Chuan requirements. Anchor was used to convey the message of the requirements having a steadying or stabilizing effect especially during stressful times of our lives. Effortless effort in our sometimes chaotic lives.
To tell you the truth I had been reluctant to talk because I really wasn't sure that I wanted to be motivated out of my stalled state. I was finding mediocrity quite comfortable, but that word anchor really got me thinking. Instead of walking away from our chat feeing motivated, I felt at odds and instead of thing positively, I kept thinking of the word anchor in a negative way. My perception of an anchor was something heavy, used to weigh an object down and keep it from moving forward.
After doing some thinking and talking things out with a good friend of mine who is someone I respect and is a great example what mastery looks like, I had some aha moments.
There have been a lot of energy shifts and disruptions this year due to planetary alignments that have created some issues with many of us. The alignment of the planets had created an abundance of masculine energy prior to the solar eclipse. Feminine energy had been lacking. We need to learn to recognize when we are lacking balance in our lives and how to make the necessary adjustments to correct the imbalance.
There needs to be a balance of both masculine and feminine energy in our lives.
Masculine energy is action-oriented, competitive, risk taking, etc.
Feminine energy is rooted in intuition, creativity, collaboration, etc.
For me, even though I felt I had created a well balanced list of personal requirements which addressed personal growth, family, health and environment there were a couple of key components missing. The creativity and joy of feminine energy! If we're going to take this journey towards achieving mastery for the rest of our lives then it needs to be sustainable. And in order to be sustainable, we need to incorporate balance. Having that balance for me means adding joy, creativity and some variety into the requirements.
Early on in the year I was discovering all these extra pieces to the puzzle that I wanted to add in and work on. Things like proper breathing, Qigong, meditation etc. I had started to work on some of these extra pieces, but soon discovered it was not sustainable to do everything. Instead I can add variety if I work on one extra piece for a period of 1 -3 months and then move onto something else, still keeping my base the same.
Mastery is much more than the work and the result. I think it is also about all the little pieces in between that get you to where you are going and how you approach things.
With the correct balance of feminine and masculine energy, the requirements can become the positive anchor they are mean't to be.
Namaste, Michele Ward
