No Forcing & No Holding Back …

Rocks have been sharing their wisdom with me lately.

Sitting atop this cliff last week, attempting to find some sort of “meditative state of just being,” I began admonishing myself for not being able to just be empty, to take it all in without constant thoughts and expectations of myself.

And at that moment, I looked out at the ocean, and the rock in front of me, seemed to say …

“Patience. Just be. Follow me, I’ll show you how … I’ve had a few million years of experience.”

And so I sat. Watching the waves constantly hit the rocks in the same place, water running over bodies in the same place over, and over, and over again.

Surrounded by these beautiful rocks and stones that are billions of years old, that hold and tell the stories of earth, of life itself … our lives, my life, seems miniscule, laughable, perhaps even insignificant. In one breath, I can sense a thought of wanting to concede to the enormity of it all … a “why bother” attitude. Following close behind that is a grasping, clinging, fear. And if I listen closely enough (perhaps to the rocks), there is a hint of “throw caution to the wind,” a “just go for it,” perhaps a “let it go” realization (cue Elsa here) at all of the things I’ve been worrying about, attempting to perfect and grasping on to so fiercely that matter so minutely in the trajectory of life itself.

But just like anything, there’s more to the story …

“Were you to trace any life, and study even the minute consequences, the effect, for instance, of a three-minute walk over a patch of grass, of words said casually to a stranger who happens to sit nearby in a public place, the range of that life would extend way beyond the territory we imagine it to inhabit.” 
                                                                         -  Susan Griffin (A Chorus of Stones) 

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And so, I find myself squarely in the land of paradox. Learning to live and co-exist in the both/and. The contradictions and complexity. That we are both but one in the universe, and the universe itself. Both the inconsequentiality and significance of it all. Knowing that the present moment is all we have, but also the power, necessity even, of reflecting back on the smoothing waters of times past. That as Quanita Roberson says, “we are individuals, but not independent.” That I both don’t want to play small and also want a small, slow, simple life. I both want to travel far and wide and stay hunkered in at home. That there is such a thing as thought-filled meditations. That life does not end, but this one will. That just being can be doing enough.

And the quote I return to again, and again …

"May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children. Then in these swelling and ebbing currents, these deepening tides moving out, returning, I will sing you as no one ever has, streaming through widening channels into the open sea." - Rainer Maria Rilke

I think I might hear the faintest whispers of “trust” echoing from the rocks as I gently make my way back down the trail.

Until Next Time …

-N