"The great paradox:
Even when you fall apart
and your world cracks open,
you can remain
in One Peace."
- Jeff Foster
UNEXPECTED BIRDS
And sometimes you are walking down a familiar path on a spring morning,
and there are questions raging,
questions that seem to demand immediate answers.
What to do with this precious gift of a life?
Where to go?
What to say next?
Which choice to make or not make?
Which voice to listen to?
How to make everything okay again?
How to hold it all together?
How to avoid falling apart?
And suddenly the questions cannot hold,
they shatter into a million silences,
because a tiny bird has perched itself on the path in front of you,
perched in the here and now, not in the there and then
in which you are seeking your answers.
Your eyes meet hers,
and you know that everything is okay with the universe.
Questions will get answered, or not,
and solutions will appear or not appear at the perfect time,
because you will make yourself available to them,
as you are available now to this tiny and unexpected bird.
Perhaps today is not a day for answers and unshakeable certainties,
it is a day for birdsong and staying close to questions
as they walk with you down familiar paths on spring mornings.
--
ALL THIS SHALL PASS
Your sadness, your fear, your loneliness,
even your despair is so fragile, friend.
It can break open at any moment.
A single note in a piece of music can do it.
A kind glance from a stranger.
The feeling of the spring breeze on your face.
A reflection of a bird in flight.
In any moment, your sorrow can shatter into nothingness;
it has no more reality than that,
no more substance than a shadow.
The more you focus on your sorrows and fears,
the more you talk about them,
analyse them, identify with them, or resist them,
the more 'real' they seem,
the more solid and independent of you they appear to be,
the more power they seem to have
over something separate called 'you'.
In searching for a solution to your problems,
you create the problem of 'having problems' at all.
Be available for the breaking-open of your pain, friend.
Do not assume it is here for any longer than a moment.
Allow the arrival and passing of all that troubles you,
including the very idea of a troubled self.
All this shall pass, remember, all this shall pass.
--
HEALING HAPPENS WHEN YOU GET OUT OF THE WAY
Let people go through what they have to go through
in the present moment!
They are tired and they want to rest.
They are exhausted from the fight,
from the pretence and the lies,
from having to hold everything in
and hold everything together
and hold everything up,
and great waves of energy are now being released
throughout their body.
Stay present with them.
Waves of sorrow, hopelessness, fear, shame and guilt
are surging now.
Let the energies rise up,
let their whole body vibrate and shake and quake if it must,
let them wail, scream, roar, laugh, cry,
sh*t themselves if they have to.
Offer them nothing but the greatest gift of all:
your fearless presence.
Stay with them through each breath, each motion,
in every moment.
Hold their hand,
but don't try to fix them,
change them,
stop them experiencing what they are experiencing,
or give them premature answers.
If you become uncomfortable,
or feel like you want to rush in and 'heal' them,
or 'save' them, or 'fix' them,
or prevent them from feeling what they are feeling,
or make everything 'okay' for them,
own that -
it's your need, your discomfort, your fear, not theirs.
Do not treat them like a victim or an invalid.
Do not confuse them with who you think they are.
Honour the power that moves in them;
validate their experience totally.
Trust the unpredictable intelligence of healing,
and know that their 'symptoms' may get worse
before they get better;
energy may become more intense
before it dies down.
What appears now as chaos and disintegration
may in fact be necessary release
and intelligent reorganisation
of a blocked system.
Sometimes our hearts need to break wide open
so we are able to hold more life, more powerful love.
Let your warm presence remind your friend
of their own warm presence,
so stable, so fearless, so free,
so deeply rooted, grounded, here.
Know that who they truly are cannot be broken,
not by even the most intense energies,
and cannot be fixed,
and life never makes mistakes
even when life seems like a mistake.
Love is all that matters.
The rain falls,
stars explode in silence
somewhere out in the vastness of space,
and here on this tiny planet someone called Earth,
sometimes we meet and
hold each other.
And sometimes you are walking down a familiar path on a spring morning,
and there are questions raging,
questions that seem to demand immediate answers.
What to do with this precious gift of a life?
Where to go?
What to say next?
Which choice to make or not make?
Which voice to listen to?
How to make everything okay again?
How to hold it all together?
How to avoid falling apart?
And suddenly the questions cannot hold,
they shatter into a million silences,
because a tiny bird has perched itself on the path in front of you,
perched in the here and now, not in the there and then
in which you are seeking your answers.
Your eyes meet hers,
and you know that everything is okay with the universe.
Questions will get answered, or not,
and solutions will appear or not appear at the perfect time,
because you will make yourself available to them,
as you are available now to this tiny and unexpected bird.
Perhaps today is not a day for answers and unshakeable certainties,
it is a day for birdsong and staying close to questions
as they walk with you down familiar paths on spring mornings.
--
ALL THIS SHALL PASS
Your sadness, your fear, your loneliness,
even your despair is so fragile, friend.
It can break open at any moment.
A single note in a piece of music can do it.
A kind glance from a stranger.
The feeling of the spring breeze on your face.
A reflection of a bird in flight.
In any moment, your sorrow can shatter into nothingness;
it has no more reality than that,
no more substance than a shadow.
The more you focus on your sorrows and fears,
the more you talk about them,
analyse them, identify with them, or resist them,
the more 'real' they seem,
the more solid and independent of you they appear to be,
the more power they seem to have
over something separate called 'you'.
In searching for a solution to your problems,
you create the problem of 'having problems' at all.
Be available for the breaking-open of your pain, friend.
Do not assume it is here for any longer than a moment.
Allow the arrival and passing of all that troubles you,
including the very idea of a troubled self.
All this shall pass, remember, all this shall pass.
--
HEALING HAPPENS WHEN YOU GET OUT OF THE WAY
Let people go through what they have to go through
in the present moment!
They are tired and they want to rest.
They are exhausted from the fight,
from the pretence and the lies,
from having to hold everything in
and hold everything together
and hold everything up,
and great waves of energy are now being released
throughout their body.
Stay present with them.
Waves of sorrow, hopelessness, fear, shame and guilt
are surging now.
Let the energies rise up,
let their whole body vibrate and shake and quake if it must,
let them wail, scream, roar, laugh, cry,
sh*t themselves if they have to.
Offer them nothing but the greatest gift of all:
your fearless presence.
Stay with them through each breath, each motion,
in every moment.
Hold their hand,
but don't try to fix them,
change them,
stop them experiencing what they are experiencing,
or give them premature answers.
If you become uncomfortable,
or feel like you want to rush in and 'heal' them,
or 'save' them, or 'fix' them,
or prevent them from feeling what they are feeling,
or make everything 'okay' for them,
own that -
it's your need, your discomfort, your fear, not theirs.
Do not treat them like a victim or an invalid.
Do not confuse them with who you think they are.
Honour the power that moves in them;
validate their experience totally.
Trust the unpredictable intelligence of healing,
and know that their 'symptoms' may get worse
before they get better;
energy may become more intense
before it dies down.
What appears now as chaos and disintegration
may in fact be necessary release
and intelligent reorganisation
of a blocked system.
Sometimes our hearts need to break wide open
so we are able to hold more life, more powerful love.
Let your warm presence remind your friend
of their own warm presence,
so stable, so fearless, so free,
so deeply rooted, grounded, here.
Know that who they truly are cannot be broken,
not by even the most intense energies,
and cannot be fixed,
and life never makes mistakes
even when life seems like a mistake.
Love is all that matters.
The rain falls,
stars explode in silence
somewhere out in the vastness of space,
and here on this tiny planet someone called Earth,
sometimes we meet and
hold each other.
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