Every day, I tenderly pluck and sort the unwanted guests between the treasured plants in the garden of this life of mine. I carefully reach between the stalks and flowers I choose to keep and arrange them all just so.
And, even with the most careful attention, I never leave my garden without scrapes, brush marks and bruises.
Yes, some of the most treasured plants in my garden have thorns. I move with particular sensitivity around them lest they snag my flesh. And somehow even as they cut me, I am still able to see their beauty and feel their special worth. They reach out and brush against me as if they just want to touch, to say “isn’t this all so grand that we are here?!”
It is at that moment when I am wounded but still capable of loving – even those plants with thorns – that I recognize that this coexistence is the essence of thriving.
It doesn’t mean stop what you are doing. It means stay connected to your source, as if you are carrying your home with you, so you are not impatiently trying to get somewhere.
Slow down from the inside, even if the outside is wanting or needing to move swiftly. You can move swiftly, full of purpose and zeal, but on the inside remain steady, slow moving.
When I slow down on the inside, I find I don’t need to push so hard on the outside because I know I’m already where I should be.
Creativity is a river always running through us…a river that sources imagination.
Imagination gives rise to widening pools of contemplation and greater depths of cohesion.
From this place springs the voice of the intuition…flowing strong and confidently into my external reality.
The more often I sit by this river and allow the currents to flow, the more resonant my knowing and the more joyful and fulfilling my experiences become.
With each breath, feigning an attempt to soften the tension in my muscles.
Always on high alert, my body is the ever faithful soldier standing at attention, ready to advance, attack, or defend.
My thoughts and feeling providing constant counsel, conducting their business at all hours of the day and night as if essential personnel.
It is a strange request I make that all the components that serve me in my daily busy-ness are called upon now to rest.
They are troubled by this pause as it could imply they may no longer be needed. They resist – the body…the mind…the emotions that want to protect and define me.
And yet, a strange and delightful spaciousness coats my experience when I am willing to just sit down and breathe.
It frees them all to not disappear but to serve me better. They become my friends, sipping tea on the deck, holding hands and dancing in the absence of mission and doing.
Oh, the joy of knowing my thoughts, my feelings, my body in the absence of need.
We rest here for a bit together, finding a freshness in how we coexist…
Do not worry, my friend…we know the way. To stumble or feel unsure does not require that we abandon the walk. Rather, it is simply calling upon us to step more genuinely and confidently across the stones, to move more freely to the rhythm of our own knowing. We have been preparing to walk these stones, this path, for a lifetime. You know the way.
Perhaps just like with so much else in our lives, these days are calling for us to release ourselves from engrained beliefs, resist holding onto outdated information, and let go of old ways of doing things. These days are providing an ideal space for new and beautiful growth, the kind that emerges from sloughing off the decay.
Whether crashing wildly in or softly lapping at the shore, the waves of life continually curl up at my feet.
Today, I choose to dive right in. Tomorrow may require a more easeful entry.
Either way, I feel the tug of the current. Either way, I am there to explore and flow and feel myself as something else, moving with the water as I know I cannot go against it.
Either way I get wet…which delightfully is the purpose in my dance with the waves.
When I start with the exhale, I start with a release, emptying space so that I can fill it just so. Filling becomes not as urgent when I am no longer grasping for the next inhale but expanding intensionally to receive it.
Emptying allows the filling to happen with less effort, with the simple purpose of fulfillment as opposed to rescuing or catapulting me.
With intensional emptying comes graceful, careful filling.
For it is not the act of filling that carries me on as much as the emptying which provides the space and focus for me to move on more fully.
Slowing down and extending the process of releasing creates more emptiness, more space for nothing that in return leaves me more ready to fill with everything.
Whether crashing wildly in or softly lapping at the shore, the waves of life continually curl up at my feet.
