My yoga teacher began class with this chant this week, which means (more or less) "gone, gone, gone beyond, utterly gone beyond, enlightened, so be it." The Heart Sutra invites us to become more than what we are, more than ourselves, to go beyond what we know, and find that in that going beyond, there are no more expectations, no fears; we are free to simply experience what our new selves offer. By letting go, by going beyond our mere selves, we can experience wonder.
I'm about to "go beyond" what I know of life, and enter into an entirely new experience, certainly by having another child, and possibly by changing my career. I could have expectations. It's hard not to. Sometimes I feel like I'm hard-wired that way. But, the mantra suggests, it's better to allow myself to simply grow into this new person that I will be, to immerse myself in these new waters, and to experience this life fully.
A friend gave us some baby clothes, which I washed and organized in the baby's room tonight. It starting to look like a little girl's closet now. Am I starting to get anxious about the birth? Yes ... and I'm trying my best to focus on all of those blessings and good wishes that were showered down on us just a few posts ago. Going beyond what I know, taking a leap of faith, with confidence.
It's sort of an interesting coincidence that I was just "tagged" by two fellow bloggers for the Versatile Blogger award; versatility, after all, is about going beyond what you know. Athena from A Field of Dreams gave me one of these, and Lauren from Lauren vs. the World gave me the other. Thank you both for your kind words and recognition! The rules of the award are that you link back to the bloggers who gave you the award, share 7 things about yourself, and then award 15 recently discovered great bloggers. This sounds vaguely chain-mail-like to me, not to mention that I think there are lots of amazing women out there (and I gave the same award recently to some of the bloggers I follow), so I'm going to break the rules and do something different: I'm going to link back to some things about me, but then I'd like you to choose one of my followers at random to give the award to. I reached 60 followers today (hooray!), so you have lots to choose from. :) You can tell them that the award is on my site for them to pick up.I wish I had a recipe for you today, but we've been eating some boring things: more lentil and spinach soup (a different recipe than the previous one I posted, but similar nonetheless), curried ground turkey and peas, a crockpot mulligatawny that disappointed us. I'm considering making some magic cookie bars tomorrow, after my ob/gyn appointment, so I'll post some tantalizing pictures if I do. In the meantime, I hope that there are good smells coming from your kitchens, and that you do something small this week to go beyond yourself and your small corner of the universe.
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