THE PLAY BETWEEN LOVE AND POWER IN THE MANDALA
By maestro. Filed in Productivity |
Parenting is a constant tough balancing act between love and power, a continued dance of adoring your children while setting firm boundaries to protect their health and welfare. At one extreme, some parents love their children yet shy away from the powerful activities of setting curfews, supporting homework habits, and administering discipline. At the other end of the spectrum some parents have their children well trained and polite with little thought to the emotional impact of their powerful actions. I find it is a never-ending process of learning about how to clearly exert my power as a loving parent.
Sport is singularly able to give us peak experiences where we feel completely one with the world and transcend all conflicts as we finally become our own potential.
— George Sheehan
In sports, here coaches turn up the heat to improve play. Good train- ers introduce a new way of approaching the game and then push the player to relinquish old habits and create new ones. For the player it can feel relentless as the trainer admonishes them to try one more time. With love, they powerfully wear the players down, taking them to their edge again and again. They get the players to “play their hearts out” during the heat of the battle. Heat and heart are important themes of the Fire phase.
This fire does not exist alone. It needs earth and air (form and expression) to survive. Water can contain or can arrest it. So to take advantage of the fire or creative sparks arising within us, we need to use all that we’ve gathered in the Earth phase to fuel it and we need to express (Air) our new fiery ideas. We must also be constantly aware of and use the emotional landscape that we encountered in the Water phase. During the Fire phase we must try to let as much of the conflicting information as possible be “true” for a moment to find the creative solution. We will feel creative tension as the opposites continue to fight within us, and it can be overwhelming.
Taken From : The Way of Conflict—Elemental Wisdom for Resolving Disputes and Transcending Differences
