Riding the Whitewaters of Life
The weather has improved in the Algarve and I’m looking forward to sitting in the sun on the terrace and a relaxing day outside today. As I gazed out from my window, I had a thought. How it is that one day it is cloudy and rainy then wait a few days, and it’s sunny and bright? These cycles are never ending and yet, so often, we want to hold onto something so badly denying that everything passes.
Life is constant movement. In quiet meditation I can almost feel the movement physically, when my attention is both acute and open. Perhaps it is the energy of the Equinox last week causing a recalibration of sorts, taking that center-point within me and drawing my energy out into the Universe, a dialogue with life where the only thing I can do is listen and receive the silence as the fundamental conversation I need to evolve.
I admit that I often try to hold on to my past attachments to people, things and the habitual ways of living generated by the conditioned mind. But it’s like falling into the rapids and trying to grab a tree limb so as not to go with the current. The current gets stronger the more I resist.
When I would go whitewater rafting the guides would tell us if we fell out of the raft to lie back with our feet in front of us. The current would always win. But by lying back you didn’t exhaust yourself and with feet out you could bounce off boulders in the water until the current finally took you safely to shore.
We are all in whitewater right now.
Some of us know it, some know and resist and some don’t know at all and are being violently swept downstream. There are days that the best thing to do is to lie back, feet out front and surrender to the ride taking energy from the current instead of expending energy and exhausting yourself in a futile attempt to stay in one place, too afraid to let go. It’s all part of our grand ride here.
We will reach the shore safely, not without bumps and bruises, but believe that everything passes, even now, when the waters are turbulent, but imagine that eventually, we’ll arrive on shore.
That is, after all, what hope is.
Have a blessed weekend.
Photo by Megan Nixon on Unsplash
