A Stirring Season

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Restless. Unfocused. Spinning. Drifting. I feel stirred up inside. Sometimes I can reach the calm center, but just beyond this place my thoughts are scattered and in a swirl. Maybe this is just a reordering process. Maybe I should just go with it for bit. I keep it stirred up by worrying about it. What if I relax and let it settle on its own?

The whole world feels stirred up and our fear keeps it that way. Things are changing. They have to, but our fear gets in the way of the process of order to chaos to order again. We need to become the calm center at the eye of the storm and wait until we know what is ours to do. We need to float and not tread. Life will support us if we let it. And when we’re calm enough, we’ll know what to do.

As I focused on writing this, I came to the conclusions I needed. I’ll relax and keep things as simple as possible. I’ll float and listen. Maybe what I needed was at the bottom and the only way to find it was for things to get stirred up. And with a calm, focused mind I’ll more easily see it.

The Existential Storm

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Each day passes into the next. As the Earth spins round, facing the sun and then turning away, a day passes. We put numbers on this and call it time, but it’s really movement.

Music moves us and in long pieces, is broken into movements. There is movement in stories as they progress and we call collective action for change a movement. And change itself is movement. It is the act of becoming something else.

And so the day becomes night becomes day. We come from light, become flesh and pass into other forms and into light again. We are ever becoming. We are the light of being moving through the Universe in this form and then that form and then…

All is movement except the stillness at the center of everything. What moves is born from stillness and so I find myself rendered still by so much passing. Maybe it’s just that I’m getting older and feel the passing more. Maybe there simply is more passing, more leaving, more changing than us humans have ever experienced.

Stillness is being. Sometimes we just have to be with what is. What is moving through my consciousness? What is moving through my life? I can’t know unless I’m still for a moment. Then it all comes rushing in and it’s like I’m in the eye of some existential storm. I see all that is happening and yet, if I remain still, I’m in peace and all I need to know rises to meet me right where I am.

I’m passing, too. I touch the stillness to know it’s okay. I let the stillness move me and having known it, I am able to pass into the storm, join the story and ride the feelings that come with all this passing away.

And day moves into night moves into day…

The Call to Rise

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The sunlight rests on my keyboard and I’m reminded of all the things I’ve seen or read on how we all, all of the animals including us, are drawn to the rising sun.

I just saw a story and photos of a black bear leaning against the rail of a hotel patio watching the sun rise. I’m reading Normandi Ellis’ memoir, Dreams of Isis: A Woman’s Spiritual Sojourn. In it she talks of the Ancient Egyptians love of the sun and how they saw the baboons watching, almost worshipping the sun as it rose. They even built statues of baboons doing just that. Carl Jung commented on the baboons in Egypt as well. And in a two-story apartment I once lived in I watched mourning doves on the roof next door stand together facing east as the sun came up over the houses across the street.

When I get up early enough, I open the east-facing blinds in my writing nook and greet the sun. It’s as though we’re born for this moment, that we are born in the moment the first rays appear over the horizon. The horizon is a place of possibility. All of us beings on this planet recognize a new day. In those first silent moments we realize the sun isn’t only rising over the horizon, it’s rising within us. Our heart is a horizon over which the light of awareness and compassion ascends if we let it.

I highly recommend you wake early, face east and watch the sun rise. When you do, know you join all of Earth’s creatures in a shared act of awe. We share this. We are not so different across culture or species. For one moment, at various times on this planet, we all turn to the sun, we turn within, we open to a new day in silence. Though our understanding may be different, we all feel the warmth and renewal of a shared star. Even those beings that live beyond sunlight deep within earth or ocean, even they are affected by the power that moves us all. May we realize this and the infinite possibility of a new day.

The Power of Endings

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I write a lot about becoming and how endings are also beginnings. But lately, endings, just endings all by themselves, have been on my mind. I don’t think I’ve always allowed myself time to process the endings. Without that space and time, the beginnings inherent in endings can be stunted.

Even in spring the trees shed leaves. New growth replaces old, but the old has to fall away first. And that falling away holds meaning. What has fallen meant something and now it is no longer. Except we remember it. What is remembered lives, as one tradition I follow says, but “it” is no longer present in the same way, and that leaves us disoriented, expecting what can no longer be.

We experience endings all the time, but only some really strike through to the heart of our being.

Yesterday I watched an interview with Melissa Gilbert on Super Soul Sunday. Her best friend’s life was ending and it brought her to that edge of clarity. The end made realization dawn in her heart. She dropped everything to be with the woman who was the love of her life. She left her husband and her life as she knew it. An impending end summoned love out of the depths.

Why do we think we have forever? In a distant metaphysical kind of way we do, but this experience, in this form is finite and that’s the greatest gift. It’s truly the greatest gift.

Love, when it’s new, is a kind of free fall. And losing someone we love is as well. I watch the leaves drift from the tree outside my window. It flutters and then rocks as it catches a breeze. That’s love holding us as we fall. The departed and those left behind, both in free fall.

Those of us left sometimes feel as though we’re speeding towards the ground until we realize there never was one. We just go on falling. And that’s okay. We’ve been released. Susan Piver, a meditation teacher, says when the heart breaks, it breaks open. It’s love unbound. It’s both painful and so unbelievably beautiful.

The sun is setting in the west now. As it goes down, we are able to witness its brilliance in a way we can’t when it’s high in the sky. The end of the day does carry the promise of tomorrow. But this day, this unique day is done. We won’t have it again. Take in the brilliant sunset. Take in the words of love shared this day. Take in the touch of a loved one, the warmth of your pet on your lap, the hug of your child. Take it all in. And let the day end in peace.

Always Becoming

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It’s dusk and the wind is blowing through the trees that are quickly becoming shadows against a fading sky. And I want to feel the wind on my skin and let this moment change me as all in between times change us.

At this very moment the breeze reaches through my window. It wakes me up. As this day ends, I feel another one waiting to rise. There is no real beginning or ending. Embedded within the day is the night and within the night is day. Within us, who we are to become is already there, waiting to emerge out of our experiences. A life lived is a life ever changing, ever becoming.

For a long time I stood back. I said no to many experiences, and yet we can’t live and not experience at all. Each quiet moment works its magic. Each breath, each thought, each small awareness becomes a catalyst for the next. Life is alchemy. Our souls want to be here, to experience, to become and become. What’s next, they whisper on the edge of each night as it becomes dawn.  

As I stood back I also plowed forward. That seems like a contradiction. But it’s not. I didn’t dive into life; I dove into busy work and fussed over this and that. All that busy work made me feel as though I was doing something, but I was doing everything except the things that would move me forward.

Keep it simple. Go within. When we do, we know what to do next because it will rise up and move us.

We complicate life. Luckily for us, Life refuses to be complicated. It’s a process of the soul endlessly becoming. We are Spirit flying out of the darkness so that it may know itself. Spirit rises and we are born.

And so I listen. The Universe speaks through many avenues and the words and ideas I resonate with become mine. Monday I’ll step into a new role that feels like an old one. I’ve served writers before, but this time I serve as a natural unfoldment of soul.

It’s dark outside now. City lights flicker in the distance. But I can still make out the form of the tree across the street. The wind is barely a breeze now. As all gets quiet, the day isn’t dying. It’s getting ready to rise again.  

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