Settle here, settle now, and be.

What can we do to align ourselves with the natural flow of the energy of this universe ?  What can we do to align ourselves with force that has no part in disagreeing with anything. Has no investment in things being a certain way.   The ego was born to get stuff done, to survive, go make change and facilitate progress.  And it's being severely overused. It's in overdrive; thinking seems to many like it's the only thing that is real, the only thing that is powerful.  Even in the moments when there's nothing to do, nothing to say, we think of something to do, think of something to say. 

 

Being still feels so awkward, so painful, so uncomfortable.  Being silent feels weird, clumsy and wrong. So many people get to their holidays finally and can't relax on the beach they've taken themselves to for a break. When we go to bed we can't sleep because the wheel of our minds keeps turning. When we're attending the thing we planned, we are thinking of what's next, what needs to be done at home, what we'll have for dinner tomorrow. 

Somehow fully inhabiting this very moment is a massive challenge for us and we rarely get to bask in the here and now, with nothing to worry about, nothing to think, nothing to do.  Yet we complain that there's so much to do, so much to organise, so much to hold together.  And think how many moments there are in any given day. Think how many moments we've lived and how many of them we've taken up with distracting ourselves from the stillness, the peace, the presence that is here in any one of them.

Maybe presence is the answer to it all.  What if we found answers to our deepest questions in our presence, in simply being. And what if all our problems would seem easier to be with, seem less significant from this place ?

When we settle into ourselves in the moment, we start to notice. In the moment when we start to notice our bodies, our breath, the life that's all around us, the space, the people, the sky, the ground, the movement of all the tiny muscles that enable me to type these words. What does it feel like to experience my breath moving in and out of my mouth and nose, expanding my chest to allow my lungs to be filled and emptied ?  What does it feel like to have gravity hold me on this seat and keep my feet on the floor ?


What happens when we do this, what does life look like from here, what feels possible ?

The vulnerability of loving and living so fiercely.

Yesterday one of my Soul Sisters died.  She was lying in a park in San Francisco with her 11 month old daughter and their dog.  A parks and recreation truck (the ones that pick rubbish up etc) ran her over and she died shortly after from head injuries.  She was 35 years old and living a fiercely loving life.  She was parenting her little one so closely and so intimately and she was so happy to be a Mum.  Work had begun again after maternity leave and she was finding her feet between being a working person, a Mum, a Wife, a friend, teacher, learner and coach to so many.

I call her a Soul Sister because there are people who I meet along the way who are deeply aligned with how I want to live, who I want to be. These people are willing to have the conversations that I experience as life affirming, curiosity sparking, nourishing and which are also brave, bold and courageous because many times they are not easy.  I call her a Soul Sister because of how fiercely she loved her daughter, her husband, her dog and so many many people around the world that she taught, coached and learned with.  I call her a Soul Sister because of her courage to live in vulnerability, to love so deeply and in such connection.

The essence of my friend is still here and I can feel it.  The essence of her is a bright, funny, real, humorous, generous, friendly, curious, open, dedicated and truthful spirit.  I know that the people she has left behind will have this deep imprint of her soul on theirs.  And may this be some kind of balm for the pain, grief and letting go. 

And this blog is a blog of gratitude, a gratitude that's arising in this moment out of a raw, grief filled heart where not much of life feels real.  The gratitude is for those of us who are willing to live the vulnerable life, to be in life in a way that feels frighteningly risky.  My heart feels filled with all the mothers out there who love their children with all of their being.  It feels full of all the fathers who hold their families so deeply in their hearts.  Full of all the brothers and sisters, wives and husbands, friends and colleagues who wear their hearts on their sleeves and risk it all to be in relationship with those important to them, and also those beyond our immediate family and friends.  It's filled with all the grandparents who enjoy their grandchildren and love them so much that they become different people to when they parented their own children.

It feels so filled with risk to be in relationship in this way - to fully bear our selves to another, to be honest, to be kind, to be undefended.  To truly love and throw ourselves into relationship and admit how we really feel - how natural it is for us humans - and how frightening to think we may lose it.  And let's not allow this to stop us.  Let this give us permission to jump even more fully in, to enjoy what we have, every second, every encounter, every lesson, every heartache - and see it all as life - the fullness of live arising for us.

And then if we die one day, we'll die in the knowledge that we've gone for it, we've accepted life in all it's pain and glory, all it's happiness and upset, all its difficulty and generosity.    We'll die surrounded by the relationships we have bathed in, grown from, given to.

This blog is for me really.  Processing this day of my own pain, my own aching heart.  Allowing the waves of grief which have a life of their own, to be in my body and to go with the flow and learn what I can learn from how I am experiencing the passing on of someone in the world who was making a difference, who was taking a stand, who was changing things for the better.  I'm so so sad.  And I'm so grateful for her presence, her kindness, the way she has affected my life by who she is and how she was.

There's another train, there always is.

We all have good intentions, we all have ideas of what we want to do, how we want to do it.  I bet we all fail regularly to live up to our expectations that we put on ourselves to be the people we want to be. We know we could be all that we wish for if only we did what we know is best for us. 

I don't know about you, but I have serious resistance to keeping up with the things I know are good for me, things that support me and things that have me progress in the way I want to in life.  This is a great source of self-attack for everyone - whether it's an exercise regime we only do for 3 weeks and then give up, a meditation we do daily and then we stop, eating healthily that lasts for a week and then the junk food creeps back in, tidying our desk and within a week it's piles of paper all over again.  Our habits are deeply grooved into us, and change is hard.  And we are really good at giving ourselves a hard time when we try to do something differently. 

I find this especially around my growth as a person - how many times I have failed to be kind, failed to be patient, failed to live up to the personal ideals I have of what it is to be a loving human being. 

I remember a particular day very clearly when I was subtly giving myself a quiet and incessant telling off about not being good enough and as usual, only I was privvy to this low lying dissatisfaction with how I was progressing as a person. 

I am good at witnessing what happens in me during these times of self-dissatisfaction - I feel hopeless, a bit useless and many things look impossible to me because of my mood of resignation and I experience a lack of energy or a dullness in me.  Of course from this place, the world looks a certain way to me, I feel what I feel, say what I say, see what I see, and sense what I sense because of my mood. You could say that my orientation to life at any point in time is what determines my experience.

A mood of resignation, hopelessness and inaction certainly brings forth a world flavoured with a lack of possibility, sameness, nothing changing, smallness, victim stories and a diminished supply of energy available to me to engage in what matters to me.

On this day that I can remember so clearly, a song was played to me - it's called Another Train by The Poozies. A couple of the lyrics of which are in the picture above.  The song begins with 'The Beginning is Now, it will always be'.  And I remember the balm that this song became for me in this moment.  A gentle and heartfelt reminder about the truth of life, how it is constantly renewed.  Each moment presents it's possibilities for beginning.  Each moment holds another train of possibility that we can climb aboard if we choose.  We are empowered to make choices from moment to moment.  However 'given up' we are, however hopeless we feel, life itself is here for us on a plate.  Its forgiving nature, is endlessly served up ready to welcome us into the next moment with open arms. 

The nature of trains is that they keep coming, life keeps arriving to take us to where we want to go. Each moment holds the possibility for this opening to be taken up. 

When I remember this part of how life itself is, I watch how my mood changes.  What arises is a mood of relief, of energy, of opportunity.  Life is not holding it against me that I haven't lived up to a standard.  Life is happy with everything, just the way it is right now.  Life is not judging me - it has no opinions of me. Life is inviting me, holding me and showing an opening in each moment. 

It's never too late.  We're never too old.  We may have missed a chance (or many), but there's always another one.  And life give us infinite chances, life is providing train after train, moment after moment, inviting us to get on board, take it up and participate.