Furious is not the same as fierce. Furious is your ego talking. Its the fight to get even, to set things right. Furious focuses on getting rid of a problem. It may look good on TV, but furious rarely succeeds because someone who is furious can’t see everything that’s actually happening.
Fury doesn’t work, but fierceness does.
Fierce is someone who is balanced. Someone who clears their internal obstacles before focusing on any external obstacles. Fierce is someone that sacrifices ego and the perception of safety in order to go to a place that frightens them. Fierce is someone who can transmute the energy of a situation by adding a positive charge to a negative one. Fierceness is someone who stays in their heart when everyone around them is winding themselves into knots. It’s about having the honesty and commitment to change a situation instead of being changed by it. Fierce is about telling yourself the truth of the possibilities and what’s at stake without feeling the obligation to “make everything okay”. Because everything will never be okay. and that’s okay. Because that’s how we continue to keep learning and growing.
My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.
You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.
I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.
Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.
In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.
We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn’t you say you were a believer? Didn’t you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn’t you ask for grace? Don’t you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.
What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.
One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these – to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.
Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.
There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it. I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.
The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.
By Clarissa Pinkola Estes
American poet, post-trauma specialist and Jungian psychoanalyst, author of Women Who Run With the Wolves.
griffin tried so fucking hard to kill magnus and was thwarted every time by the power of love. first he tried to make the chalice consume him. magnus countered that with his love for julia. then he tried to make the entire astral plane pull him to his death, and the mcelroys gave us the arms outstretched sequence, which was literally taako and merle both going hey god? hey, god? fuck you. this is our ruff boi and you can’t have him. griffo literally had to resort to asking travis “how do i kill your fucking character” because magnus was too hard to kill. your mistake, griffin, you made your podcast about the power of love and family and tried to kill the character who loves the easiest. what did you expect. he’s invincible.
You know maybe the reason a certain stripe of people see two dudes whose entire character dynamic is constant antagonism and immediately make them the most popular ship in the fandom is because they were raised on media where constant antagonism is treated as the basis of sexual tension for het couples. You know, the “theyre picking on you because they like you” train of thought? and probably they either never learned to tell the difference or they’re willing to excuse it if it’s in the name of an m/m ship
Draw the three banes of creativity; Perfectionism, procrastination, and self-doubt.
Perfectionism seduces its hapless victims, stringing them along for miles on end, feeding off their draining pursuit. Many have managed to untangle themselves from its curse and with it became free.
Procrastination is a liar, telling them how Time itself revolves around them, fooling them that tomorrow will never come, but tomorrow is exactly what’s coming, leaving their victims in ruin as the sands of time evaporate before their very eyes.
Self-doubt holds its victim’s hearts hostage. Pushing pins into the hearts of its many victims, it feeds of the joy they had, leaving them hollowed husks, paranoid and indecisive.
Woah, these are so amazing to see! I’m in awe! Thank you so much for taking the time to share these with us all! I love them so much!
When people talk about traveling to the past, they worry about radically changing the present by doing something small, but barely anyone in the present really thinks that they can radically change the future by doing something small.
just moving along like everyone else 