The Art of Gentleness…

You CAN Give the Gift of Gentleness, Today

Introduction

There’s only one way to get things done. It seems. And that’s to push and to punish. To warn and to worry. To criticise and to cajole. Well, that’s the paradigm most people live in, anyway. (How’s that working out?) There is another way. A gentler way. The art of gentleness reveals all…

 

Gentleness – From Awareness, Self-Love & Inside-Out Understanding

Gentleness is a dance (with life).

Whether you’re dancing with yourself (in your head), with a real-life tango dancing partner (ahem!), or with just anyone and everyone you ever meet in life. Gentleness is a dance. With life. (And with your self-awareness and self-understanding.)

Dance your steps gentle, then, and let each be a right step (even if it feels wrong)…

 

Gentleness As Self-Love

Gentleness can be gentle.

Gentleness can be encouraging.

Gentleness can be an exquisite expression of love.

But I write about gentleness here, specifically, as it applies to you and how gentle you are with yourself.

So I’m also going to call gentleness:

• Being okay with yourself

• Allowing yourself to make mistakes

• Giving yourself permission, basically, to be (human) you

Gentleness is okayness. You are okayness. You are okay.

Okay?

 

Remember: Nothing is Wrong With You

So let me say this as gently as I can, gentleness comes from knowing – an awareness, an understanding – that nothing is wrong (with you).

No matter how foul a mood you are in, how mean you’ve just been to a loved one, or how much YOU DON’T WANT THIS FEELING in your body right now – nothing is wrong, with you, nothing.

Nothing is wrong other than you have a false idea about yourself, about life – who you should be, and what you should and shouldn’t experience as a human being.

Do you understand what I’m saying, here?…

 

Gentleness: An Inside-Out Understanding

Question: How To Be More ‘Gentleness’, Then?

Gentleness cannot be encouraged with any other energy than gentle energy.

Just as you cannot love angrily, or fear lovingly, you cannot scold yourself into gentleness. So phrases like…

• “I need to let go!”

• “I’m so judgemental!”

• “I should know better!”

only serve to take you away from gentleness, from the love that you really are.

A better phrase is this one:

• “I make mistakes sometimes. (Hee!)”
• Or, I compare myself unfavourably to others
• Or, I think I know what’s best for others (and for myself)
  Etc.

Yes, as soon as you’re noticing your flaws and you can find amusement in it, you’ve found your gentleness again. (Awww, and don’t gentleness just feel good.)

 

Simply Understand Yourself More – an Inside-Out Understanding

So, how to be gentle, then?

Simply understand yourself better. Comprehend who you are. Be conscious of how you work.

Understand that you think, that you take that thinking seriously – sometimes to the extent that you listen to your thinking more than your innate wisdom (intuition):

• You rely on your thinking so much  that you feel you need to marshall your thoughts, make sure that they’re ‘on message’.

• You take your thinking so seriously that, simply put, you just cannot be gentle with yourself, and with what you think. (It makes sense for you to be harsh, judgemental, and plain derogatory to your lil ol’ self right now, because what else is there for you to do?)

(Ahh, the art of gentleness…)

 

What else is there for you to do? Understand yourself more, that’s what else.

• Deepen your understanding of the 3 principles – a description of the inside-out nature of human experience.

• Deepen your understanding (and love) of yourself.

Do these things – starting with the simple act of noticing – and gentleness with yourself and your experience of life will meekly follow you, I promise.

Dance away. Fall down, get up, dance.

 

The Art of Gentleness Comes from Awareness

Finishing with… 5 Great Gentleness Quotes

Let me leave you with these wonderful gentleness quotes, that speak to the power behind ‘gentleness’. But I do not share them with you to get you to be gentle. Instead, I share them with you to recognise how gentle you are with yourself, already…

“Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.”
– Saint Francis de Sales

“Only the weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.”
– Leo Buscaglia

“Oh! that gentleness! how far more potent is it than force!”
– Charlotte Brontë

“A wise mother knows: It is her state of consciousness that matters. Her gentleness and clarity command respect. Her love creates security.”
– Vimala McClure

“By learning to open your heart and body while embracing and trusting all energies from rough ravishment to sublime gentleness, you can open to be lived by the mystery that lives the entire universe.”
– David Deida

Find more quotes on gentleness (and it’s art) here (Goodreads.com)

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

Nothing isn’t improved with gentleness. There is so much forcing, striving and harshness in this world, see, in your world – isn’t that right, dear striving one? – and gentleness is the antidote. Yes it is. Think of gentleness as water, then; think of the world as the dessert; see the value of gentleness.

Be gentle with your mistakes. Be gentle with your bad habits. Be gentle with your humanity. (Because you really are doing the best you can right now, dear human. And none of this means what you think it means.) Do all that and a wonderful thing happens – you become gentle with others, too. Or, at least, gentler.

And gentleness feels good.

 

GENTLENESS: Some Next Steps…

Don’t take my word for it, here. The art of gentleness is an experiment with life that needs to be tasted directly. So, experiment away, please do!

• Experiment with being gentler with what you think about
• Experiment with being gentler with what they think about
• Experiment with finding more ways to be gentle

Or, much more simply when it comes to the art of gentleness…