I am an open landscape on which you paint your experience.
I mirror back to you just what you put out there.
If you aren’t sure of what you are painting,
pause,
step back,
clear your mind,
open your heart.
Come sit a spell in my grand, vast emptiness before you start to fill the canvas with elements that may not produce the landscape best for the both of us.
Tread gently on the rolling hills,
pause and watch the rising and setting sun,
see ocean…
flowers…
wild flowing grasses…
Deep wooded forests.
The landscape is yours in which to play.
Just remember that whatever you add to this landscape – the meeting of your choice of media, colors and textures – is yours to assimilate and accommodate, not mine.
What is regular? Normal? The way things are “supposed to be?”
It seems our nature is to crave stability and consistency, to look around us for the expected.
Can the expected really be a constant pattern of change, redefined based on circumstances?
In the fall every tree chooses a slightly different timing and color and pattern of change based on its relationship with the earth, the air, and its surroundings.
Even the evergreen loses some leaves, changes shape, and becomes something different year after year.
This shifting is considered beautiful, an often awe-inspiring evolution.
No tree taking the exact same steps, no one looking the same, yet all normal, regular, naturally changing.
This change allows the tree to thrive.
I must remember there is no right or wrong in change, simply an opportunity to be unafraid, vulnerable, and resilient.
Every change has a transition, a pause between what has happened and what is left to do.
This threshold offers a clear and open vantage point,
an opportunity to be fully present, not leaning back or lunging forward, but knowingly and confidently stepping into who we are now ready to be.
Whether recovering from an illness, overcoming loss, or realizing dharma, we come to this threshold not by accident or failure but as a reminder of our power to heal and know greater peace and ease.
In this doorway lies an intricate and yet simple network of universal connections fueling our every desire and supporting our every need, holding us, preparing us, reminding us we are ready to carry on. We are never alone.
We do not need to know what lies beyond this doorway, or to worry about being received on the other side.
We need only remember the full and unwavering choice we have to be here, to step in and step through to the wild and beautiful landscape infinitely sprawling before us.
Photo credit: Clifden Castle Ireland, gateway to the wild and beautiful, captured by my mischievous soul sister.
Grief…it’s not about the loss as much as creating and being able to access a little warm place in your heart where you hold that connection forever.
I used to think that grief was the act of severing ties and throwing away something special because it was lost.
But now I know that grief is a process of storing the memories of the specialness of every experience regardless of its labels, conditions, and how it came to be or not be.
Grief is experiencing the loss without getting lost.
When I become the mountain that I see in the distance, I feel my steadiness, my ability to withstand the currents of the winds and the torrents of rain. I may be walked upon by people, animals and time, yet the cracks, worn paths, and decay only add to my character and beauty.
I reach towards the sky never forgetting the love of the earth – the earth within me.
When I feel my true strength, I no longer need to be strong
The gentle breeze brushes the hair off my face, opening my eyes to all the possibilities that lie on the path before me.
Sunlight bends and shifts through the branches above me, sending waves of warmth and shadows dancing upon my skin, drenching my muscles down to the bones.
The earth below pushes up into the soles of my feet, every step met with a symphony of sensations – crackling forest debris, jagged rocks protruding through the dusty soil, the path shifting and bending me.
The pops of green in the scattered brush and the sprinkling of wild flowers and occasional sprigs of berries remind me of the lushness in this life.
Smells meld together, carving new trenches in my memory, designing a magnificent tapestry of infinite connections linking the past to the now.
My palm now meets the furry edges of the bark on the thousand year old gatekeepers of this sacred space, full of knobs, notches, and burn marks, all signs of a life well lived. It’s touch drains the deepest crevasses of my being, tears now flowing in synchrony with the close by river, eroding the stone edges of my cheeks, chin, and chest.
All the pain, struggle, and fears, begin to melt. All the doubts and failures dissipate. My body, my soul now willing, softness consumes me, not absent strength, but expanding into the subtle power of me.
It is here that I witness harmony, balance, and beauty in the inconsistencies, imperfections, death, and birth before me…within me.
It is here that I discover my own capacity for healing.
Monday Mindfulness 