I feel the leaves gentle float through the air to the ground, the crows high in the tree roosting, the slow flow of the river, the iridescent blue kingfisher sitting on a branch. I feel the news I’m reading. I feel the company of walking with a calm friend. I feel another friend, a more scared and angry one. There’s the feeling of the passing traffic, patting the dog, how I’m breathing. It’s all a feeling. And I’m intimately connected to it all.
I observe the expansiveness and contraction of these feelings and the effect deep in the nervous system. How I close and open to each.
When I open I am intensely present and aware and very still inside. I am content with this moment. I want to be in this moment.
And when I close, I am ‘beside’ myself, as if I can squirm my way away. I want to be in another different moment.
I’ve spent much time feeling closed. That was normal and familiar to me, and open was reserved for a few specific occasions where I felt safe enough to open. Looking at a sunset, a child’s smiling face, playing with the dog.
And I returned to the familiar closed state over and over and still do. I watch the news, hang out with that irritable friend, as if to check that mechanism is still there.
Now opening up is the new frontier. I can have an enormous adventure right here without going out of my door even. How marvellous. And opportunities in abundance lie outside the door too. To remain open no matter what is happening. Let it be. Don’t try and change it. It’s a feeling energy passing through. I can breath into it with it.
I can see peace if I choose to.
Learning to Rest with it All 