And then some days - mysteriously, miraculously - we find ourselves enraptured by a vast and shining ease, a place of calm beyond the transient weather of the world. We settle, we rest. We relax into an unshakable sense of being utterly at home in the world.
We become the sky and the sky becomes us. We are held, healed, made whole. We find ourselves in deep communion with all that has been, all that is now and all that will ever be. We understand, at last, what it means to feel awake.
We place our small selves in accord with the big flow of life. We see the natural rhythms and primal flows. We smile when we consider the cosmic and undeniable circle of creation, maturation and destruction - in bodies as in countries as in mammoth geological formations. We remain humble in the face of such vast forces, understanding the futility of fighting life as it is and will always be. At some point in this liminal space, we even cease to fear death, for we understand its necessity in the unending circle of life.
And when this realization - of our simultaneous smallness and vastness, of our deep connection with all of life, of the folly of fighting what is so much larger than our small minds can comprehend - we are set free. We rest in life’s great flow without fear and with hearts wide open. Do not be afraid, we hear, for life holds you in its arms and love will surely carry you to the farthest ends of life and death, light and dark, ebb and flow.
In this peace, we soften into the quiet understanding that all things happen in their own good time and way, regardless of how hard we try to push and pull them otherwise. We breathe more easily, understanding that to everything there is a season and that patience is as necessary as willpower, if we want to tread lightly and with ease.
Each crash and tumble of our lives, we know, is not the end of the world, but just one more of life's inevitable collapses along the long and beautiful arc of time. And each crash, we also know, will be followed by return and resurrection, by a rising up, back to the surface where we surely will breathe again.
Our minds become like the sky, as the Buddhists say. We let our bodies and our brains grow quiet, possibly even still. In this deep communion with all of life, we exhale into the spacious truth of all that is vast and luminous and unending and real.
In opening the gates of our self to the world in this way, we become the world. We become earth, wind, water, fire and sky. We are left with nothing left to do but to breathe freely, walk surely, and love with abandon. We become so much more that this small body moving for this short span in time. We stretch and grow and morph into the big soul of the universe, our true skin.
You are so kind! Someday, yes, when the timing is right. And I will be sure to share with you and Dave!
“Patience is as necessary as will power.” Wow.
Have you put all of your beautiful writings in a book, Claudia? We would buy multiple copies. ❤️