Meeting Your Edge
Knowing your edge inside and out, Yin AND Yang, helps you live a life of balance. But how can we cultivate an inner knowing so we can respond with kindness to others and ourselves? It is helpful to recognize where you begin and another ends, knowing your boundaries, remain neutral, be strong, and able to respond rather than react from a polarized place. Notice your stance next time you are in a reluctant moment feeling you are being pushed into the pulls of another. Or is it you doing the pushing onto the pull of a reluctant other. Are you regularly in an aggressive, or a defensive position? Can you be aligned in more of a neutral peaceful warrior stance?
For the better part of three decades, as part of my practice, I have been led by a set of Native American Animal Medicine cards that my mother-in-law gifted me back when we were deep into exploring metaphysics. One card that has come to visit me time and time again has been the Armadillo Medicine Card whereby you are instructed to create your own shield, represented by the shell of the armadillo as armor helping you to be clear on your boundaries. On the outside of your own shield (drawn as a circle on paper) you write all of what you will not accept, except by invitation. This would be a good place to write “mother-in-law showing up without being invited” but as it happens mine always has been non-obtrusive in this way! But seriously, it is best to be honest about any family members, friends, colleagues, even thoughts and words of your own, that may need to be on the outside of your shield or circle. On the inside of your shield you write all that you ARE willing to experience, a place where you can tolerate and even welcome things like: change, freedom, goodness, wherever you may need it. This shield, should you choose to use it, makes you aware of obstacles while creating openings for your own good.
Getting to know your edge, that place where Yin meets Yang is a never-ending life giving cycle. It is from this place you can find balance to support you naturally even in the most ordinary moments...
much like witnessing
ordinary stillness at dusk
where day yields and gives way
to night
or dawn’s first light
where night meets and yields
to day
