Just because I tolerate your actions does not mean I condone them.
It does not mean they do not wound me, make me bristle or rattle my confidence in my own internal guidance systems.
Tolerance simply means that I am giving you room to be you – to learn and teach us both through your actions – to allow us to explore anger and fear, but also know patience, compassion, and forgiveness.
Tolerance is grace flexing its muscles. Tolerance is the power of my will to know my truth and allow you to explore yours.
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.
Here I sit in the middle of my couch. Extreme joy balancing on one armrest. Great challenge and sorrow on the other. There are pillows and soft coverings that support me as I lean to one side or the other.
There is excitement and movement, equal levels of engagement and doing required at either end of my couch.
There are days when I slide over to one side and days that I spend a large amount of time on the other. Neither better nor worse. Both engaging my heart and mind in ways that are good for me. Both providing opportunities for me to grow. Both utterly exhausting.
Today I choose not to lean or slide. Today I choose to curl up right here in the middle of it all, to feel the balanced rhythm of my heart, lulled into rest by my breath. Today I remember the weariness in my bones. Today I remember that laughter and crying use the same muscles.
I smile and melt deep into the cushions of my comfy little couch, so happy to have joy and sorrow by my sides.
In the cold, still hours of dawn, the frost surrounds me. Like a fortress, ice cakes the windows.
Agitation builds as I feel blocked from the broader landscape that lies beyond that wall of ice.
Straining to look past what’s right in front of me, I fear I am unable to move forward, somehow missing out. Life out there is happening without me.
And then my gaze shifts. As easily as the breath transitions from exhale to inhale, I see it…the beauty that lies before me as these little crystals of life come into focus.
Shiny…Small…Magnificent…Fleeting.
They dance before all else that lies beyond and will, as the sun warms them, part to change my view.
For now I rest in the marvel of how they gathered there to share their beauty and their story of the importance of not overlooking what’s right in front of me to hurry to the beyond.
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.
Quiet cradles my mind like a blanket of fog embracing the landscape, softening the angles and ridges of criticism, judgment, and doubt.
Pain and suffering become frozen silhouettes. Dark and light meet, their edges fading into one another as if inseparable.
It is in this space where I find freedom to explore the notion of existing without shame or blame. I don’t need explanations, answers, or stories. It is here that I realize there is only love.
In and around, all that exists is love when I allow the low-lying cloud of peace to settle in.
