Hello again! Here we are at summer’s end, caught in the current of an approaching autumn. Maybe your routine has already changed and you’re totally preoccupied with school, career, and the future. Or, after so many months of disruption, you’re only concerned about your family’s health and safety– and your own mental stamina.
In the easiest of times, we worry. We wrestle with fear and we struggle for clarity. We get trapped in our definitions of reality. We push hard against other people’s ideas– against their ways of doing things and seeing things. We get frustrated. In the easiest of times, we find things to complain about– and these are not the easiest of times.
Still, you have the power to make it easier. Without denying the challenges, or pretending everything is fine, you can make any moment better. You can be a role model for the ones you love. You can create a vaccine against lies and an antidote for fear. How? By taking a few moments now and then to experience the truth of yourself.
Words can’t capture the truth. You can’t accurately define the miracle of what you are, but you can sense and imagine it. With a shift of attention, you can feel the force of it. Give it a try now. Follow along, and take a brief excursion into the wonder of you, starting just before every action… You are still. You are silent. You are an eternal force resting within infinite potential. Forever lives in you. Even in stillness, you are chaos: the wellspring of creation. You wait, fierce and invisible. And then you perceive.
You perceive, and bring countless reflections into being. You see yourself, the artist, in everything. You move, and suddenly you are energy in action, sculpting, imagining. You are one atom, many atoms, and then a universe– adapting and expanding.
You are all the elements of Earth. You are the soil and sun, wind and ocean. You are the percolating cycle of rains and rivers. You are the seed, the sowing, and the blessed arrival. You are the will of life. You are.
Remember this. Breath in the experience of you, whenever you can. Feel it, and make the feeling part of every moment. Speak and move from this point of view. Oh, sure, worry if you must. Take everything personally, if you have to. Let your mind slip off the rails. Lose yourself. Forget yourself, but then come back.
Always, always come back to this.
-Barbara Emrys