Embodied Awakened Child
The Dimension of Loving-Playfulness
Inspired State is Mindfulness
Builds the Capacity for Insight
Sacred, Spacious, Sensual
The Fox is grounded in Tiger energies. Though clearly there is immense potency within her, she moves as if floating on a river current, leaving an undisturbed trail, barely bending the grasses.
For this moment she has settled in place and surveys the landscape with sustained focus. With her silent animal mind so fully embodied, she watches the shimmering heat give rise to the changing multiplicity of forms. There is no human resistance or skeptical thought that interferes with her full connection to a power deep as the roots that bind us all. She knows a transcendent reality effortlessly springing possibility into existence.
Why This Painting?
The portrait of the Fox calling on the resources of the Tiger encourages you to hold the center beyond apparent division. In the face of chittering squirrels and the sonorous one-notes of self-important bullfrogs, and the multiplicity of flittering life, paw down 6 inches and remind yourself of the rooted force that holds the landscape entwined. There is a oneness mightier than any one of us. Everything is connected to source at the deepest level, despite the animosity and division that could distract you and spoil the day.
Practicing this open state does not weaken you, it makes you more flexible, more insightful. In psychodynamic and experiential therapies, insight is the uncovering of unconscious conflicts, unresolved childhood experiences and protective defense-mechanisms that operate automatically and can contribute to psychological distress. Gaining comprehensive and deep sight requires the courage of a Tiger but can lead to personal transformation.
Inside-Out
Consider the ways you can remain grounded despite the conflict around you. Even in supposed professional meetings and in intimate spaces, if there is pettiness and judgment, it can feel as if it is all pointing at you, especially if they are looking at you when they chatter (though they are in a trance state and don’t see you at all). Like all mammals, you will feel a gravitational pull toward some old familiar ways to deal with conflict, such as hiding away or savagely attacking. Severe wounds may even call you to dissociate if you are unable to physically leave.
If your wounded child is already primed by stress and any distress that you have been ignoring (pushing down), unconscious energies will call her to remember the ancient burdens more deeply. Feeling increasingly raw, you will want nothing more than to slide away, sliding out of body and your Heart, or find yourself acting in a way you will later regret.
But the Tiger in you does not lose its stripes. Remind yourself that you are joined with a force that moves through all things. Focus on breathing through anxiety. Give yourself a break. Move your sensual body. Exercise. Walk in Nature to inspire peace and awe. Remind yourself of your great Heart and do not be intimated by the foolishness of little animals. And begin to journal about what the deeper turmoil in you is trying to communicate.
Upside-Down:
If someone is attempting to drive you away from the land where you belong, they don’t know who they are dealing with. They apparently have no awareness of your connection to an Inspired source. But don’t dismiss them or, like Pollyanna, try to convince yourself that they really mean no harm, or they are just not informed enough, or they are simply misunderstood people with a good heart. However obviously ridiculous or inconsequential they may seem, they can create chaos; and, like the wicked witch of the West, they may have trained monkeys ready to fly at their command.
Do not defend yourself because that is likely to invite more attacks. Avoid the tendency to be self-contained. Seek out other Tigers and spend time with those who share your awareness and who are mighty but kind. This increases the preponderance of Inspired play, love and power available to you in your experiential landscape, and it tends to quiet the morons.