The “bow exercise”

The following is from   “Post No. 478 - Speculations: 'Input Orientation', Obama, and other stuff”   https://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2013/10/speculations-input-orientation-obama.html   Sunday, 6^th October 2013     

... 

So ... having made that speculation ... how does that, Dear Reader, apply to your own life? Where have you struck a balance between being able to exist in reasonable harmony at the price of your principles? I know where I'm juggling those pressures, and what my balance points currently are, and I frequently review them.

Which leads me to my next point, an exercise I came up with someone some time ago for someone who was coming to terms with the balance that one has to have between confidence and humility.

That exercise is based on the analogy of a bow - specifically, being the bow strong.

Now, when a bow is drawn, the strong is pulled back by the archer, and the resistance made by the connection to the bow bends the bow, and converts the archer's applied muscular effort into stored kinetic energy which, when the string is released by the archer, is transferred from the bow to the arrow - and the arrow flies.

At the point where the archers fingers meet the bow string, there are two opposing forces: one from the top of the bow, and one from the bottom (assuming the bow is in the more common position of vertical). If those forces weren't in balance (say, for instance, the archer is trying to draw the bow whole holding the string near one end of the bow, rather than the centre), it won't work, or won't work well - the arrow will either not take flight, or will be off target. If you try to draw a bow that has a broken string, it won't work at all.

So if we take the balance between confidence and humility:

• too much confidence and not enough humility leads to arrogance and hubris - the pride that goeth before a fall; 
• not enough confidence and too much humility leads to being a doormat that others walk all over (a problem for me in much of my life, which will no doubt surprise some people who know me, but then I've worked consciously and fixing that balance) or even depression.

The exercise is to stand with your arms extended out horizontally from your shoulders, out sideways, and imagine that they are the string of the bow. Imagine that one represents confidence, and the other humility, and then begin to slowly bring your arms forward into a vee, as if your arms are the string of a horizontal bow being drawn by some archer. As you do so, allow yourself to feel the balance between the two forces, perhaps even in relation to a specific situation, and contemplate how too much of either can show up in that particular situation. If you've practiced enough to become proficient, you could possibly even allow one arm to move slightly ahead of the other as you do so.

The aim is to promote awareness and thinking that will help you be mindful, and thus effective at balancing competing influences or forces - not just confidence and humility, but other poles as well.

Blessed Be

Gnwmythr (Kayleen), ShrineKeeper 

Thursday 13^thMarch, 2025

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(Gnwmythr is pronounced new-MYTH-ear)  

Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering” (just as binary gendered [men’s and women’s] sporting teams are either both given the gender descriptor, or neither).

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