by Omer Day 47
3 Sivan 5780
Tuesday 26 May 2020
In so many of our classic legends and folklore, even the greatest stories have humble beginnings. The hero’s journey is rarely worth telling without the daunting obstacles that lay between what was and what could be. As we continue in our final week of Malkhut and root ourselves in both sovereignty of self and early groundedness, for Hod with Malkhut — humility within sovereignty — we consider the obstacles and challenges that lay between us and our most fully actualized selves.
In this practice, you’ll be asked to envision this sovereign self, and then tell the story of how that came to be. For some, that may be a quite literal version of yourself as royalty. For others, royalty may be the farthest possible vision from where you see yourself ever becoming. In either case, it’s less the external vestments of this personage that matter. It’s the qualities that we embody, and the journey we’ve undergone in this process of becoming.
It’s also worth noting that we are not asking anyone to ignore or downplay the many cultural and systemic injustices that impact our abilities for full self-actualization. This is not, we hope, our version of simply “manifesting something into being” purely through our own imagination and visioning. But it also isn’t helpful to downplay the role that vision can play in defining our purpose and pathway. We hope this practice will strike a balance — creating space for vision, for storytelling, for a hero’s journey, while also recognizing the distinction between the obstacles we can meaningfully address ourselves, those for whom we will need support from others to address, and those that are likely to remain huge and impenetrable for quite some time and for which we need to find a work-around rather than thinking we can push through them if we only have enough grit and perseverance.
If or when you try this one on, let us know how it goes!
☀️Omer Day 47 practice [3 Sivan 5780 | Tuesday 26 May 2020]☀️
- Envision yourself as royalty. This may be taken literally, or more metaphorically to mean your greatest, most empowered sovereign self. Try to picture this version of yourself in your mind. (1 minute)
- Tell the story of how you came to become this royal sovereign self. Use whichever medium will feel most fluid — writing, sketching / storyboarding, speaking out loud into a voice recorder (eg your phone). Include in your story: Where or what were the most significant obstacles and challenges that stood in your way? Which of these challenges did you work through to overcome? Which were obstacles you had to simply find a way around or a way to remove rather than work through? What were the family, cultural, relational, etc roots from which you drew the power to do this work? (2 minutes)
- Now tell the story again, this time using a different medium. E.g. if you used a voice recording the first time, try to storyboard it this time. (2 minutes)
- Review both versions of the story. Highlight in some way the obstacles that you can begin to meaningfully address in the short term, those that will need to be worked through later on, and those that you will simply need to find a way to remove or work around. Finally, make note of the roots that will give you strength and consider how you will nourish those roots in addition to tending to the new growth that lies ahead. (2 minutes)
🌀Materials🌀
- Journal / notebook / sketchbook
- Writing utensil, drawing materials
- Voice recording device (usually a smartphone has this built in, or you can download an app)
- Timer
☀️This post is part of our Omer Wellness Series – a daily 7-minute opportunity for introspection and intentional focus on caring for ourselves, each other, and our environment in this incredibly challenging time.☀️
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