What
if...
An inquiring exercise to expand your sense of what is
possible.
You might want to set some time aside for this exercise, perhaps when you meditate or at least when you can sit comfortably with a pen and paper, journal, or your keyboard.
Take a moment to put your visioning hat on, but bring along your magical self, the part of you that loves to dream of, wish for, and wonder about how things might be if all the stars were aligned. Ask the naysayer voice to take a nap.
Sit someplace comfortable. Close your eyes, slow down your breath by breathing deeply in a relaxed manner. Let any stress of your day fall away, so that you can be very present to what your imagination, intuition, and sub-conscious want you to see and hear.
1.
Let's set up the context with two quotes. As you read them, allow
yourself to be with whatever images, ideas, thoughts and emotions arise.
This first quote you have read many times I am sure. This is by Marianne Williamson.
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you."
Now for the second by Rilke, from his book, "Letters to a Young Poet".
"Women, in whom life lingers and dwells more immediately, must surely
have become riper and more human in their depths than light, easygoing man,
who is not pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of any bodily
fruit and who, arrogant and hasty, undervalues what he thinks he loves. This
humanity of woman, carried in her womb through all her suffering and humiliation,
will come to light when she has stripped off the conventions of mere femaleness
in the transformations of her outward status, and those men who do not yet
feel it approaching will be astonished by it. Someday (and even now especially
in the countries of northern Europe, trustworthy signs are already speaking
and shining), someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer
mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something that
makes one think not of any complement and limit, but only of life and reality:
the female human being."
2. Now take a moment to allow these two quotes to sink in. Read them again if necessary, but allow your imagination and intuition to fill your mind's eye with images, ideas, thoughts of possibility, opening, growing, abundance, love, light, and the fullness of YOU and the Universe around you.
3. Now, complete the following questions keeping the nature of the question open, positive, bigger than big, fuller than full. You can pick just one question and complete it many times, pick many and complete them, or pick all and complete them many times. Just allow your creative side to do the exercise, not your inner critic.
I will give you an example:
What if there were no limits?
What if I fully trusted?
What if play was the fastest way to abundance?
You get the idea so let go...
"What if
I .....?"
"What if women .....?"
"What if men .....?"
"What if the world .....?"
"What if the universe .....?"
"What if people .....?"
"What if you .....?"
"What if green were .....?"
"What if a .....?"
"What if it .....?"
"What if .....?"
Write as many questions as you can. Don't edit, just write. Keep going even
if it feels strained. Keep writing. Once you get past the strain, they will
start to flow and flow and flow. When you feel done, stop.
4. Take a deep breath and acknowledge
that part of yourself that allowed so much of what is inside you to spill
forth.
5. Look at your questions. Notice
the flow. Which questions really grab you? Which questions do you feel drawn
to investigate, to explore, to find out what might be on the answer side?
Which questions to you feel compelled to LIVE?
6. Take the questions
from #5 and use them as a weekly practice. Live them.
Again from Rilke's
"Letters to a Young Poet" :
"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love
the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given
you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything.
Live the questions"
Please feel free to pass this on to other women as an exercise in opening to a greater sense of what it means to be a gloriously big, wildly creative female human being.
The quotes can be interchanged with others that might open you to other questions.
I can't wait to hear how you enjoy this exercise.
