~ Imagine My Surprise ~ – Sharon Mauldin

Ponderings, Poems & Practices
for Living Your Brilliance!

~ An Offer For You ~

I have the heart and energy to offer you support in this uncertain time by way of guided meditation, gentle practices or simply with time to chat about what’s moving for you. It’s my way of supporting the field of healing while I’m tucked away. There is no charge for this.

If you’d like to meet with me via phone or zoom please contact me with two or three times that would be good for you. Also let me know where you are located so I can make the time-zone conversion.

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Hello Dear Ones,

Poetry has become good company to me during these past months. Maybe it’s the way a poet’s words speak into my heart and soul and invite me into parts of myself I haven’t explored before.

David Whyte has been one of those poetic allies. I want to let you know about an opportunity to join David in his study, via Zoom, for a three-Sunday seminar he’s calling Half A Shade Braver. You can find more details about this at the end of this message.

I’ve already had the privilege of attending three other Zoom seminars with David and they have been amazing and deeply nourishing. This next series begins Sunday, Sept. 6th. Kenneth and I will be there!

Here’s one of David’s poems that spoke to me this week, followed by his own notes about it.

Sitting with you in love,
Sharon

IMAGINE MY SURPRISE
Imagine my surprise
sitting a full hour
in silent and
irremediable
fear for the world,
to find the body
forgetting
its own fear,
the instant
it opened
and placed
its unassuming
hands
on life’s enduring
pain.
And the world
for one moment
closed
its terrifying eyes
in gratitude.
Saying:
“This is my body, I am found.”
…
‘IMAGINE MY SURPRISE’
From ‘FIRE IN THE EARTH’
Poems by David Whyte

‘Imagine My Surprise’ Looks at one of those strange experiences that lie in wait for us, when we sit intensively, for long periods of silence and the body is allowed to slowly unburden and flower into something so strangely beautiful that we do not feel it is our body anymore, nor to begin with, that we deserve that newly arriving sense of having a better home in the world.; The body transforms when left to itself in real silence; when it starts to become a different body than the one that first accompanied us, with so much trepidation, into that quiet. In this case, looking from the outside, I was ’sitting Zen’ on a black cushion, in traditional fashion, in a formal Sesshin or retreat, but on the inside, there is no descriptor at all as to what you are or are doing. When we get to a depth of silence where we can drop the name we have been given or have given to our selves we are able to stop naming and blaming the world for all the ways it has hurt us. Freedom lies in the giving up of our hoped-for immunity from suffering. It is no wonder then, having to give up our defenses, that we are so terrified of silence, but also why we are so surprised when it yields up its unassuming treasure. DW

Three-part online series with David Whyte
HALF A SHADE BRAVER
The Tiny, Transformative Disciplines of an Everyday Life
https://live.davidwhyte.com

Sundays September 6, 13 and 20
10:00am Pacific Time ~ 90 mins.
(recording of each session we be available)

Join David Whyte for a look at the micro-disciplines of an everyday life: those small, everyday steps – sometimes just half-steps – that can radically transform our approach to the future. Practices where we are not trying to become an Olympic hero, but where we change our future for the better by becoming just half a shade braver in almost everything we do.