Whether by myself or with many,
Warm or cold,
In a place familiar or the unknown,
At the moment I begin to feel disconnected,
I wrap myself in my memories and experiences,
The times when I felt or longed for love,
And those precious moments I encountered,
even if just briefly,
the unconditional essence of my being,
Always there, all ways there.
Cloaked in this love, I am never alone.
Taking flight,
balanced in the nature of giving and receiving,
knowing that leaning too heavily into one force or the other will take me off course,
Cause me to tumble.
In order to give, I must receive.
To receive requires generosity.
When I balance these complementary forces I experience the grace and ease that can only be realized when I move from the center of my being,
Wings extended,
Heart open.
Souring on the currents of life.
When the energy in a situation gets big do you get bigger?
When the energy gets big, do you get littler?
Neither is right or wrong, they just produce different effects.
Where I match the energy carefully and skillfully in its bigness, riding the inhale to its peak, I can take that energy by the hand and usher it to a more stable space.
When I remain small in the big energy I model a means to come back to center, a way to arrive home on the wave of the exhale.
So I can choose whether to breathe in and ride up or breathe out and come back. Where I get into trouble is if I only head one way and forget that there is an inhale and an exhale in every encounter and that big and little are compliments as much as contrasts.
Settling into my breath, I find the spot where the inhale meets the exhale – the moment of attachment of my body to the breath, the point of connection to my inner knowing.
At that point, I find stillness. Projecting from that stillness is a clear and receptive space of awareness.
From that awareness, I follow the path of least effort to discover my intention – the sensation, word or object that reflects my true state of being. In that intention I find reassurance, guidance, and confirmation in my decision making.
I sit for a moment longer in the stillness, awareness and intention until I can let go of all discomfort. Full of ease and comfort, my sails fill confidently with my inner knowing, fulfilling my purpose and potential.
Finding stillness, awareness, intention, and letting go, I sail away home.
I find fear exhausting.
Negative thoughts so draining.
Judgment and greed just tie me up in knots.
Why do we have to find fault and blame?
My breath flows so freely when I express kind words.
My muscles glide with ease as I extend gratitudes.
Joy makes my whole body sparkle.
This bright side is where I want to live,
no pain in perceived inferiority,
no striving or comparing,
no forgetting that everyone is always doing their best
and mistakes are the delightful gifts we are given to develop our curiosity, wonder, and awe.
Meet me here in this place of freedom to be the splendid, courageous, bright and imperfect beings that we are intended to be.
When I tap into the channels of giving, grace, and peace in me, I become a place of respite.
Like a leaf offering shade or a branch to swing upon, I bend and sway to provide a universal place for all to play and rest,
where we can breathe, soften, and melt into the essence of our being.
For when I open these channels of love to you, my roots find strength.
I stretch into my purpose.
Together we branch out.
In our oneness, we more fully expand into who we are each meant to be.
Scattered like the ripest fruit falling away from the tree, petals melt to the ground bearing the raw, delicate heart of the flower.
The breeze carries the evolution of being on its wing.
It is jarring, turbulent, and so beautiful…the scattering…
the falling apart to make something new.
When I feel angry, my world appears abrasive and confrontational.
When I am confused, all is cold and insensitive.
The more beautiful my world feels, the more gentle and receptive it seems.
As I play in this world with wonder, curiosity, and awe, the world invites me to laugh and be free.
When I feel wrapped in care and comfort, I find the world worthy of love.
My world is a reflection of my beliefs, a reflection of what I see on the inside.
My world gives me just what I see.
This is what is real, as long as this is the story I want to see.
So much of this past year was spent retracted, curled inward, huddled up against myself. Darkness, distractions, and attempts to keep things all the same occupied much of my thinking. Circular thoughts woven into fears. Captive in this castle, spinning my time into the yarn of “what if.”
I imagined I was suffering, experiencing punishment of some sort. Separate from my routine, separate from others, separate from much of what I knew as familiar.
Now, a year later, I am being asked to do something with all the yarn that I have spun. I am being asked to go back to some form of the way things were, to put the yarn away. But I have rather come to enjoy the spinning and might just want to sit and spin some more.
Ah, but it could be time instead for me to learn to knit. There are endless possibilities of where I can go from here and what I can create. If I can only see that every moment is an opportunity to learn and create something new. How fortunate I have been to have this time to spin this yarn.
In this re-emergence as the gates slowly open, it is lovely to see what others have woven. Some have acquired new skills. Connected and inspired from within, they are already knitting. Some have rolled the yarn into balls to store away for another time. Some have just begun to make the yarn. In this experience, I have learned that I can resist the weaving, stumble and climb over all the yarn, or I can learn to knit.
I am the turbulent sea. I am the dense fog. I am the shining sun behind the haze.
I am all three. So what you choose to see, feel, and believe of me is what you choose me to be.
I am quite content to be all three.
Monday Mindfulness 