Ride the Waves!

This year is the most challenging one of my life. In the past I would have challenges in work or in my personal life and they were manageable because I could see the good stuff happening around me and outside of the challenging event. And that good stuff gave me hope, courage and strength to move forward and come through brilliantly.

This year the challenge is in the seeing. Many times I feel stuck in the muck, like quick sand, struggling to see the light, the good stuff. I've come to realize that the good stuff is smaller and less noticeable which requires me to live more in the present, absorbing the moments of each day. Mark puts is in a really nice way and I sum him up by saying it is time to ride the waves! (life jackets are not provided)  Enjoy!

Another good one from Mark Nepo:

One Constant Arrival from the Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo

Whether drifting through life on a boat or climbing toward old age leading a horse, each day is a journey and the journey itself is home. ~ BASHO

Twelve years ago, as my journey through cancer was beginning, my grandmother was dying. I believe she knew she was dying. I could tell because when I'd visit her in Kingsbrook Medical Center in Brooklyn, she would sit in the edge of her bed and peer off into some distance she alone could see. She was ninety-four, and I had the feeling that she was imaging the other shore the way she did when she was ten, crossing the Atlantic on a crowded steamship that was trudging though the huge waves.

Life for her was one endless immigration, one constant arrival in a new land. Perhaps this is why I am a poet, because immigration is in my blood. Perhaps this is why I understand the world of experience as one vast ocean we never stop crossing, even at death.

I’m asking you to imagine the life of your spirit on earth as such immigration, as one constant arrival in a new land. Given this, we must accept that no matter the shore before us, the swell and toss on the sea never ends. When brought to the crest of any swell, we can see as far as eternity and the soul has its perspective, but when in the belly of those waves, we are each of us, for the moment, lost. The life of the soul in Earth has us bobbing on a raft of flesh in and out of view of eternity, and the work of the inner pilgrim is to keep eternity in our heart and mind’s eye when dropped in the belly of our days.

• Sit quietly and imaging yourself bobbing safely on the ocean of experience we never stop crossing.
• Breathe deeply and imaging each day is a wave
• Enter your own rhythms and feel what kind of wave today is
• If today is a belly of a day, acknowledge the hardships you are facing

• Breathe slowly and remember that another crest is coming. Bring to mind the last rising, remembering what that enable you to see