What a lovely card of the week – a bright yellow, sunny “EMBRACE” message with two beaming (and hugging!) sunflowers. Yellow is the colour of happiness, joy, and warmth and it’s radiating all over the place this week! This gleaming sunshine reminds us that our life life is here to be cherished and that we can embrace ourselves (and others) as we truly are. Sunshine is the force that turns those sunflower faces skywards, which promote the process of growth, and which keeps things from being forever stuck. We can be sure that whatever we EMBRACE comes into better balance
There are a lot of misunderstandings about this familiar message though (especially in spiritual communities) – It’s a myth that you have to be happy all the time to embrace your life and love who you are. We are not emotional robots and only embracing (or looking for) the sunshine in life is imbalanced and impossible. Some days will obviously be less sunny than others; we might set the toaster on fire or find ourselves on the wrong side of a parking ticket. If something hurts and you experience a flop in a pile of horse-apples, hearing “oh isn’t life wonderful? BE GRATEFUL!” might make you feel resentment or feel the pang of stress of having to be perfect and at peace. Embracing life doesn’t mean loving every single element of it or forgoing our power to create and change our lives.
Stuff happens and it’s indeed ok to not be a bubbling brook of sunshine happiness ALL the time. Our recent cultural preoccupation with striving for happiness has, in some ways gotten in the way of the basic principles of happiness itself! In fact, feeling however you feel and allowing yourself to feel that way IS part of “embracing” life. That doesn’t mean nursing a bad attitude or clinging to a patch of woe-is-me (because that’s simply a mechanism to avoid the next steps) — but it does mean that if, in the middle of your sunflower patch, a temporary rain cloud passes – you’re ok! You can embrace your feelings so that you can move through them. That’s what this card is really all about –allowing ourselves to really embrace WHATEVER we are and whatever we really feel…. no matter what it is! (That doesn’t mean you’re always right, or that those emotions always need to be acted on, .. it just simply means that you can embrace that you’re having them.)
This is a special week where we can embrace both those wonderful things that we love about ourselves, and love about life and we can ALSO embrace the things that we wish could be better, including our flaws. This is the week to embrace our big feet, addiction to television cooking competitions, lack of ambition or tired spouse. It’s a time when we can look at our loudest child and be glad that they have a voice, or look at our lumpy legs and be glad that they carried us through so many adventures with grace.
Like last week, pay attention to who you really are and what you’re all about… because the more often you embrace who YOU are (and your own wisdom) the more you can appreciate other people for the same reason. We can accept that other folks aren’t clones of ourselves. What if your friend wants to go to a hipster bar wearing a handle bar-mustache, an ironic t-shirt and an orange fedora? … or what if the blind date you just met wants to move to Mongolia and you don’t? Isn’t that great for them? The truth is, what they’re doing doesn’t say ANYTHING about you, who you are or where you’re going. Embrace those differences… because you know what? Maybe you weren’t planning to go to Mongolia anyway.
If a guy tells you he’s not looking for a serious relationship, your mom tells you she’s not interested in exercising, or your cat tells you he’s not interested in getting off of your laptop in the middle of you typing a proposal – LISTEN to them. Embrace what they’re saying. Don’t let it just bounce off your head like a Nerf ball.
But most of all, as much as you can, EMBRACE yourself, this week. You have a lot going for you, you’ve got a lot going on. There are things about you that you do deserve to embrace and honour more than you do. What are they? How can you listen and embrace more this week?
Fire up KC and The Sunshine band, pack some sunflowers in the biggest vase physics will allow on your end table, or dust off that yellow fedora. – Have a great sunshine-y week!
About this deck: The Soul Coaching Oracle cards by Denise Linn is published by Hay House.
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