There once was a bright and shining little girl who truly knew her path and her gifts. Even at a very early age, contrary to her young counterparts, this little girl spoke her truth. “I won’t eat that animal…I just won’t,” she would cry even when it was the only opportunity she had to be fed. I will dance and run. I will play on my breath. I will have struggles and need experiences along the way to help me remember who I am, but I will make my own way. What she didn’t realize was how many others she would touch with her shining light, like a glowing ray of sunshine. And so she grew, in her own way, finding adventures far beyond the comfort of many others in her circle of family and friends. Yet, she never stopped listening to that voice of her truth – she stood up as she needed, she walked away with forgiveness and grace at times when others fell into compliance and complacency, and she shared and shared all of who she was and knew everywhere she went. She didn’t need a title or a label for what she spent her whole life naturally doing. In fact, others took her guidance and called it theirs. Others wanted to ride the wave of her knowing as if they could capture that spirit through study or association. And routinely many prodded and questioned her, demanding validation and justification around the path she chose. Nonetheless, she carefully sifted through all the disingenuous tethers, all the glitter and temptations, and stayed on her path, flanking herself with friends, colleagues, and ambassadors of truth, of inner knowing, of love…and she let the rest melt away (not always without sadness, anger, or feelings of loss, but carefully on the rhythm of each breath returning to wholeness). She is a daily reminder of the gifts of expressing, honoring, and living as authentic self….of living as love.
Gliding across the still lake, the swan appears motionless…blending in, yet standing out.
There is an ease to the swan’s movements – small segments of being pieced together to produce strong, elegant, fluid motion…unfolding in a seemless, timeless, effortless evolution.
The swan goes not against the current, but blends into it, rides it, and collaborates with it to create a presence and ease that cannot help but draw the breath from me.
Attuning to the breath, I begin to realize the power and simplicity in the life force that moves so strong, elegantly, and fluidly through me. With refinement of its movement, the breath becomes balanced and smooth. A fullness and simulaneous sense of roaring power and simple stillness come as each segment fully aligns.
In that very breath, I am the swan. In that very breath, I know grace.
I feel the rustling of the earth as outside the dawn awakens.
Sleep fell so swiftly upon me as the full moon watched over and with a new sense of soft inquiry my eyes flutter open. My awareness rustles with the sounds, colors and shifting environment around me. The morning presents itself to me, as my awareness awakens with the dawn.
In this moment, as my awareness shifts from my inner state of attachment to an interconnection with what is around me, I feel a different state of aliveness. An aliveness of knowing simultaneously what is happening on the inside and the outside of the container that I perceive as me.
This awareness is scintillating and soothing, clear and not completely definable. I am aware of all and nothing.
My awareness flutters and swirls like the newly arising birds that sing and dance just outside my window, tuned as well into the mystery of awakening.
It is in the awakening of the dawn that I can explore the awakening of my awareness. It is in the awakening of my awareness where I come closer to knowing the true sense of who I am…if I am who at all.
I begin to wrap myself in the dawning of this awakening. In donning my awareness, I welcome the awakening of this harmonious interconnection with all that is around me.
Sleep evades me when my thoughts and emotions battle to define my reality.
When I look through the lens of fear and doubt, my eyes are reluctant to close as my body dwells in the space of my inadequacy.
If I could just soften the clenching, look another direction, allow my body to surrender to my inner knowing that all is ok, then I could dive in…dive in between the thoughts and feelings and their manifestation in my body, dive in to a space wide open where I can sort my experiences, face my decisions and choices, explore outcomes, and perceive failures and successes without consequence or judgement.
If I can just allow myself to dive in, I discover a playground in my dreams that frees me from the illusions of success or failure, where I always have the option to stop the experience or change its path.
And, then I awaken remembering that I have this same control, this same ability to change my experience, when I am awake as when I sleep.
I am no longer restless for I realize I am not my dreams, I am not my feelings, I am not my emotions – they are just the space in which I play.
As I push and pull upon it, a shape begins to form. The temperature, texture, and identity of that clay grow with me.
As my best efforts produce an uneven, imbalanced figure, one to which I have nonetheless become attached, I realize more work needs to be done.
To bring the work into balance requires undoing what I have created, detaching from what is currently there before me.
The chemical reaction in my brain, the visceral response in my body, and the tugging of my thoughts and emotions make reworking the clay painful.
To restore balance, I must pull the familiar apart. I must disintegrate the work. It is not without labor and discomfort that I destroy the familiar and let go of what I knew as my best work.
I tremble with fear and doubt – I cannot imagine a greater work than before.
And there it is. After the pain of disintegration comes release from what was…freedom from past bests.
Pleasure and pride arise as the new shape takes form, coming closer into balance.
With faith and perseverance, disintegration leads to evolution.
This skin, at times limiting and restricting, full of imperfections, is also the container that holds me, that cradles my every thought and feeling, the heart of my being.
In this skin, I know nourishment.
In this skin, I sense and feel fully.
In this skin, I explore edges and learn boundaries.
I know full contentment when I allow it, in this skin.
Can you turn your face to the wind and welcome it?