Receive Life

This final chapter is about bringing the guests of consolation out into your real world. Being receptive to life involves bringing the right environment for life to spring forth not only in your internal realm but having this interact with the external environment. That is where life experiences become rich and helps solidify your state of being in consolation. It also helps to bring the guest house back into potentially desolation triggering events.

Bringing consolations to every day life prepares us for the difficult phone call with a mean client, the stressful presentation upcoming, the fear of losing your job, the stresses of not having enough food on the table for the family. Life is no bed of roses, the rose comes with the thorns and some of them are sharp and pricks through the fragile skin.

We cannot stop all suffering from happening, but we may prepare ourselves for them as they come. The way to do this is to bring consolations through your writing, visualizing or simply narrating verbally to yourself, the real world situation, and bringing feelings of consolation - Hope, Peace, Love or Joy into this situation. At work, it helps to bring Playfulness into a potentially stressful meeting. For a brief moment before the event starts, imagine the elegant Love or Playfulness wearing a big smile, eyes wide open in anticipation, or the refined Peace - nothing shakes her, she takes all feedback in like a wall of rock amidst crashing waves. See them with you, telling you that you are loved and you are safe. They will remind you that you have been through similar experiences and you are still alive! No matter what happens at the event, prior to that visualize first how these consolations would react unfazed during and after the meeting and also imagine yourself being buoyed by their confidence that everything will be fine and life goes on.

Most importantly, recall that the words they speak come from within you, from inner wisdom, and that wearing a fresh perspective may offer ever more insight and wisdom through the event that is about to occur. Imagine yourself absorbing their feelings and immerse with them into the event. You are loved and you are safe and everything will be alright.

In time to come and with more real life experiences, such a practise will ultimately build your confidence in handling crisis and it makes you not just resilient, but keeps you aware that everything happens for a reason, which is to enrich your life and the lives of others who experience your consolations despite these troubling episodes in life.