Dear Reader,

I hope this email finds you well and discovering your inner beauty in every moment.

I have three things for you today.

1) I will be offering a generative poetry circle in February. Free Verse From Your Heart uses Ren Xue principles to facilitate writing vs Qi Writers which uses writing to facilitate Ren Xue learning.

Both provide a way to go inward, share, and be wrapped in like-hearted community. You may read about Free Verse From Your Heart here or read more below in this email.

2) There will be a small change within Wisdom for An Awakening World. I've decided to leave a video for you on Mondays at noon vs going live. Most people watch the recording, it may help with issues like power failures on my end, and my inspiration usually happens while I'm walking in the woods. So, recording at a time more aligned with my inspiration may result in a stronger heart message to you.

3) Exploring Identification!

A few weeks ago I shared Patterns at the Podium with you. Since then, I've been exploring the main three characters - patterns - in my Monday talks. Here are some highlights:

A) Fear

Fear has been an area of exploration for me since I first sat on the floor at a Ren Xue retreat. It's taken a lot of heart cultivation to help with the courage to dig in. I don't really know how this could have been possible without the wisdom teachings, tools, and community I so graciously sailed into. It's taken plenty of external actions too but those actions were preceded by internal processes.

One of the areas I hadn't looked at until I wrote Patterns at the Podium was the relationship between fear and contempt. Fear curling its lip in my story was the cue. It was a long and winding road over three weeks to review an entire lifetime of clues and learn about the areas I buried in myself due to fear, the contempt I had mistakenly developed for those areas (sensitivity was the example I gave), and the contempt of the contempt for burying such precious parts of me.

Some points I offered as invitations or takeaways from my talk were:

1. have a look at fear;
2. consider the relationship between fear and contempt in your life;
3. have a look at your gifts/talents/skills and consider how you nurture and celebrate them and how you may have hidden some. Why and how did they go into hiding?
4. notice some of the ways heart and True Self try to give you information. You can cognitively gather information but you can't think your way to the root of a pattern - your True Self provides the realization and wisdom;
5. life provides the clues but you can't always see the trail when and how you'd like to. Continue to develop Trust; and
6. Life is Miraculous. How we interact with life and how we create life from the inside out is true creativity especially when we nurture True Self guidance. How do you nurture True Self guidance?

B) Avoiding and Hiding

Fear leads to avoiding and hiding and I believe that the more we avoid and hide, the more fear we generate. It also takes a lot of energy to keep those things hidden. As children, we set aside things we aren't yet capable of dealing with - like sadness, grief, and pain. In doing that we also hide our natural heart qualities - joy, love, trust, gratitude, and life becomes heavier and much more bland.

So, how do we work on the things that are hiding if they are...um...hiding?

As a quick recap to help uplift this pattern, three ways we can begin are:

1. cultivate the natural qualities of our heart and our natural state (HEART CULTIVATION);
2. develop an understanding that we need total information which comes from Shen. We can lay the foundation by looking at many sides with many angles, studying Ren Xue wisdom teachings, and opening up to a broader cognitive understanding (COGNITIVE LEARNING); and
3. unify with Shen and allow it to bring us the information we need at a particular moment. Developing our heart connection and understanding paves the way to receive Shen's wisdom. After all, communication is a two-way function. Shen is always supporting us, but we need to be in a natural state to actually receive (TRUE SELF GUIDANCE and WISDOM).

C) Mis-Identification

This is a very big topic. I'll be talking about this one over the next while in preparation for Yuan Tze's upcoming Identity and Identification workshop (Part 1: Saturday, February 24 & Sunday, February 25 2024, 9am - 12:30pm (NZDT)).

Very briefly, life cultivation is about working our way inward toward our True Self (Jingshen) - the essence of who we are that continues life after life - the core of our connection with the wisdom of the Universe. Yet, as we began to identify with our body, titles, relationships, careers, fears, sadness, and all of the things that take us into the external and away from the internal, we created the patterns that hide our true identity.

It is with cultivating the relationship with our true identity that we can begin receiving information from Shen that will enable us to unravel the patterns to the root level and free ourselves from pattern chaos.

We have the tools, the Qifield, the system, and community to help us.

It requires courage, dedication, honesty and discomfort to realize changes needed.

But if it brings about an uplifted life, moves us toward unconditional love, openness, Gongjing (true respect, humility, oneness), and into peace, harmony, real joy and wisdom -

– why would we not put in the effort to free ourselves? What is it that you might consider more important?

Why?

Is it really?

Phew, you made it to the end of this part. I seem to be energized by this topic! :)

I wish you a heart-filled and joyous week and look forward to what develops within for a continued sharing on mis-identification.

Warmly,
Stephanie​
​https://www.stephanierossauthor.com/​

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What’s inside you that wishes to be expressed?

Free verse is freeform poetry but ‘Free’ is also a verb - allow the verse, story and messages to arise from your heart and spill onto paper/keyboard.

Free Verse from the Heart is an 8-week online generative poetry circle.

This circle focuses on generating poetry by exploring where your poetic voice comes from, connecting deep within, using a variety prompts to spark your writing, sharing with each other, and providing feedback.

The discussions will be strength-based and grow into more structural components for those who wish to receive that level of feedback. We will hold the heart of your poems tenderly and with respect.

You’ll learn specific ways of listening and looking at poetry so that these cognitive components naturally begin manifesting in your writing.

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During our time together, we’ll explore these questions:

❤Where does your inner muse come from?

❤What is poetry and how do you connect with deeper layers of self-expression?

❤How do you inspire fresh and evocative writing?

❤How can writing poetry and participating in a generative writing circle be healing, informative, and a gift from your heart?

❤How do you give feedback in an uplifting way to yourself and to others?

❤What can you look and listen for when revisiting poetry you’ve written and when helping others?

❤How do you develop a personal writing process?

❤In the last class, we’ll celebrate and share polished poems you’ve developed over the 8 weeks.

This circle is suitable for beginners, seasoned poets, and the curious.

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Your Facilitator:

Stephanie Ross is a Ren Xue Yuan Qigong teacher and Vancouver Island poet. She's spent over a decade helping people grow from within and learn what it means to walk along an inner path towards True Self.

Stephanie’s poetry began with practicing Yuan Qigong and since then she’s studied storytelling, writing, expressive arts and poetry formally, informally, in community and as a personal practise.

She was a contributing writer for Ren Xue America’s Qiblog and her work has appeared in global journals and forthcoming anthologies.

Her life cultivation process is her inspiration.

Feel free to reply to this email with any questions you have about this poetry circle.

It's the first time I'm offering this class. Please feel free to share with others if you feel it may be beneficial for them.

Let's Get Social

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113 Cherry St #92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2205
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