Soft is Strong
Let's welcome softness into ourselves, our culture
Beloveds,
At the top here today, there is LOTS of news. Good news!
News #1: After yet another great piece of feedback from your fellow community members, I’m now offering group subscriptions to For the Love of Humanity — which allows teams to sign up for the full value here… with a discount.
People are saying that they really want to bring their teams into the discussion here, and I hope this helps that happen.
If any of you have any more requests like this, let me know! You can always respond to this email and reach me directly.
News #2: Over the past few weeks, I’ve been deep in creation mode for two new offerings I’ve been growing. I’ll be unveiling one of them next week and opening the application. Stay tuned for that announcement, and consider applying!
News #3: Save the Date for our first Community Coaching gathering for paid subscribers of For the Love of Humanity! Wednesday, September 25th, 2:30-4PM via Zoom. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I want to be sure it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle. Consider becoming a paid subscriber before then, so you can join us!
If that is something you’d love to do but it’s financially difficult for you, no worries. I’ll be happy to comp your subscription. No questions asked. Community is what we’re about here, and that’s what we’re prioritizing. Just ask!
With gratitude and love for you,
Cecelia 💗
Nature has so much to teach us.
I read the book of nature for lessons regularly.
And here’s one of the most powerful things I’ve learned from the Earth as it is: softness is ultimately stronger than hardness.
Think about when there’s a strong wind.
The trees and plants that can sway — bending with flexibility and give — usually survive much longer than those that are hard and cannot/will not give. The latter are blown over or broken much more easily.
Soft is stronger than hard.
Think about water and stones.
If I asked you “Which is stronger? Water, or a stone?”, more than likely you’d reflexively respond that stone is stronger.
But that’s not true.
What happens when water continuously drips on or flows against rock or stone? The hard surface is gradually altered by the water.
Soft is stronger than hard.
In a world that is excessively harsh and hard, we’ve been conditioned to believe that hardness is required of us — especially if we want to stay safe.
We’ve been conditioned to think of “strong” as bombastic, demanding, forceful, dominating, pushing, overpowering, unyielding, determined, individualistic.
Yet, this is not actually true.
There is brittleness in rigidity.
There is myopia in demanding.
There is a high likelihood of getting lost, or getting into trouble, when you are charging ahead to a pre-determined destination… without taking into account the new information you encounter along the way — and adjusting accordingly.
The latter approach is flexibility.
Or a kind of softness.
Softness Overcomes Hardness
Why does jujutsu work so well?
This term was first used by Hisamori Tenenuchi, when he first opened a school for a budding martial art in Japan.
"Jū" can be translated into English as "gentle, soft, supple, flexible, pliable, or yielding", and "jutsu" can be translated as "art or technique." "Jujutsu" thus means "the art of yielding", as its core philosophy is to manipulate the opponent's force against themselves rather than confronting it with one's own force.1
Jujutsu teaches its practitioner the art of softness — of yielding to hardness and force so that the force undermines its own self.
In other words…
…softness is strength.
Strong is actually yielding, quiet, persistent, encompassing, nudging, nurturing, paying close attention, listening, responding, cooperative, collective.
In other words…
…what our dominant culture tends to tell us is “strong” is about as opposite from what is true strength as it could be.
And that’s a problem.
Our Cultural Influences
Our culture is seriously out of balance.
Here’s why.
As we discussed a few weeks ago, these softer energies are usually feminine energies, and in our dominant culture worldwide, feminine energy is about the most counter-cultural energy there could be.
Patriarchy dominates our world.
Misogyny prevails unabated.
And I’m not just talking about the visible world around us.
We have all internalized patriarchy and misogyny so much that we don’t even realize how much we marginalize even a hint of the feminine — within ourselves, within others, and within what we allow as acceptable in our public spheres.
The only places we’ve allowed feminine energy to express openly are in places other than in public — like in the home, or spiritual communities.
To be clear: as we’ve discussed before, we’re not talking about men or women here.
We’re talking about energies… which individuals can carry, yes — and individuals of any and all genders do.
But cultures carry these energies too.
And the way that our dominant culture carries masculine energies is, in my experience, often/usually in a toxic form.
All energies exist on a spectrum, and, if they go too much to an extreme, they’re usually very unhealthy, or toxic to our humanity.
We not only have a dearth of feminine energies in the world around us, and within us, we have yet to acknowledge just how powerful their strength is.
For You to Ponder
Do you allow softness in yourself?
Do you appreciate it in others?
Or are you a “good soldier,” marching just as our culture has instructed you, and you feel an urge to marginalize it whenever you see it?
Have you experienced the strength of softness?
Respond to this email… or comment on this post online… and share your experiences. Let’s all start to fill out our understanding of these feminine energies from which we’ve been SO alienated.
Let’s practice embodying them.
Let’s open to softness — in others, and in ourselves. And let’s learn its strength, from our own experience.
No force can undermine that kind of being and knowing….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jujutsu