How to steep the perfect cup of insight

As I was boiling water for my tea today I was thinking about the value of quiet stillness for receiving answers, of sitting with ones-self until the best path emerges from within, and of the beautiful spring morning that allows this contemplation to bloom. My water boiled as I was deep in thought.

We are much like a kettle put on to boil.

First, we need be filled up. When we are depleted energetically, emotionally, or physically our resources are low and it makes it hard to create or to have the groundedness to experience the tranquility from which inspiration arises.

When we are well resourced – meaning we have energy, health, and support, we are able to take the time to explore all of our options in the world and to sit with an inquiry with patience and trust.

Then we must sit. Like water to be boiled – it takes time. You can’t make water boil faster than it boils – it needs to be in the heat for as long as it needs to be in the heat. Just like us, we must be with our questions for as long as it takes for an emergence of wisdom from within.

Finally, we have to believe. When you put your teakettle on the stove with water and light the flame under it, it doesn’t boil immediately. But, you never question that it will boil, because you know that’s the process. However if you didn’t believe and you kept taking the water off the stove and examining it and judging it, and then putting it back on, and taking it off, it would never boil.

Similarly, we must trust the process of being with our own inquiries, that even if we don’t get an answer immediately, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t coming.

I have spent a lot of my life searching for answers, hoping to have someone just tell me what to do. And they have. People will give you advice, tarot cards a direction, the I-ching a path and that’s all perfectly wonderful, but it only matters if it resonates with what you are experiencing inside.

When I wasn’t sitting with myself in contemplation, I wasn’t able to hear my own guidance and therefore all of the outside assistance was useless. Once I took the time to be still with myself, I could feel what was in alignment for my own soul and my own life.

So this spring, I hope for you to find your own heat to sit with, so that your enthusiasm can bubble up from a place that is sincere and true for you.

Love,

Briana