Love Based Living

I had the pleasure of facilitating the Love Based Living group I meet with tonight. I haven't been able to in many months since I teach on Tuesdays and most Sunday evenings I'm overloaded already. Last month they changed one of the meeting days each month to the second Monday of the month -- a night I am free! Before I could think too long about it I offered to facilitate the group.

Facilitating means you keep the flow of the sharing moving as well as come up with a theme for everyone to talk to. I arrived with a theme centered around generosity. How we define and express self-generosity. How we engage our Inner Critic to work with self-generosity. The final round of discussion being what we'd take with us from the evening out into the world -- how we stay compassionately engaged with the Inner Critic and foster self-generosity in order to cultivate generosity towards others.

And that all said I'm going to devote more time later to everything that came up. In the past when I've gone we often wrap up the questions quite quickly, but much to my surprise this topic had such depth for everyone that we used up the whole two hours for the meeting! Mindful of the evening I am being generous with myself and accepting that I need to go to bed, I want to spend time with CK who was too tired to join us tonight, and I don't need to try and cram everything into one night.

A poem that for today that came out of some of the realizations I had tonight:

Receiving

I feel my body
Pull away from
Kindness, the
Generosity of
Others, with a
Tightening of
Muscles and mind.
My heart prepares
For the withdrawal,
The betrayal,
Even before the
Offer is finished.

Now,
Even if wincing,
I try to offer
Gratitude and
Be present
To receive-
Validating
The offering.