The Possibilities are Endless if I Let Them Be...

Lynne Medsker

Art and Nature #12

“Today a new sun rises for me;

everything lives, everything is animated,

everything seems to speak to me of my passion,

everything invites me to cherish it.”

~Anne De Lenclos

An Apology is a Passage

Apologizing has always been hard for me. Maybe it is because I have been a very proud person, or maybe because I take such care to try to do things right that it is so hard to admit I've failed. At times I have felt that an apology is only warranted from me if I had a malicious intent in my heart. I have often felt that I am right and that the other person is wrong. I have become good at fake apologies that apologize for the other person's feelings, but not what I have done to cause them.

There is nothing better than a romantic relationship to come and challenge these shortcomings. Suddenly there is a person on the other side of the table whose feelings we care about, whose companionship we need. Suddenly we've hurt someone we dearly love.

To make any progress at all it is imperative that we take a hard look in the mirror. Suddenly there is a faint chance that we could have reacted in a way that was not out of our Highest Self. Suddenly the undesirable reaction from our lover was a response to the fractured message we sent out. Suddenly we are not so perfect afterall.

I have come to see apologies differently. An apology is a door that leads the way to a greater understanding and a greater sense of trust between two people. It is a pathway to higher ground. It is a pathway to humility. An apology carves out space for another person to live in. An apology is admitting to ourselves that we are still students in life and have plenty of good things to learn.

However, an apology is a promise as well...a promise that the other feelings are important and we will be careful with them in this specific way from here forward.

Soul Watching

"The soul is like a wild animal-tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, self sufficient. It knows how to survive in hard places, but it is also shy. Just like a wild animal, it seeks safety in the underbrush.

If we want to see a wild animal, we know that the last thing we should do is go crashing through the woods yelling for it to come out. But if we will walk quietly into the woods, sit quietly by the base of the tree, and fade into our surroundings, the wild animal we seek might put in an appearance."

~Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness

What “The Knowing Place” Knows

"My appointed work is to awaken the divine nature that is within."

~Peace Pilgrim

This morning I just sat and closed my eyes. I let the sounds around me grow in volume and softness. I imagined a blossom in my center and that the deeper I rested into meditation, it opened more and more, deeper and deeper, from my throat chakra and finally to my root. The whole time in my mind the question circulated “What does the ‘knowing place’ Know?” But finally when I got to the ‘knowing place’ what it had was a general “knowing"...a knowing of Being, rather than the knowing of specifics. ‘The Knowing Place’ knew that knowing specifics were not important.

Let It Rain

At Night with the windows opened

The first rain of spring
- - - - - -

let it rain
let it wash away
all of the fear I found
after unpinning every careful shape
the patches of anguish
the threads of uncertainty
the scattered pieces of fabric
that were on a path to becoming
what once was to be
the awkward steps on new legs
naked, forgetting form
walking on unexplored grounds
the shock of earth
hands reaching for the future
grasping for the past
groping for something steady
this awkward
creature
tumbling

I want to know what lies beneath
I want to know what it looks like
when it grows in the dark
pushing its tender leaves higher
clinging to the hope that
"this way must be up!"
until
that shining day it breaks through
when the sun pours over it
like a warm hand on a cold body
a burst of clarity
for a weary traveler revived

The Open Dimension of Being

I am reading a book called "Ordinary Magic" by John Welwood that is very much about living in the present moment, so far, in a very meditative way. He speaks of coming back to focusing on the breath when we find ourselves caught up in mental distractions, and then separating ourselves from our thoughts and emotions, coming back to a place of just being aware. It helps us to discover the difference between thinking and just being and makes us fully available to the power and truth that can be found in the present moment.

A favorite quote is...

“Meditation is a gateway to this open dimension. The more we sit with our present experiencing, the more we find that it is brimming with energy and clarity. Everything is happening here, and only here: the feelings in our body, the nourishment of the breath, the textures of our thought, the desire to live more fully, the pain of our disappointments, the speed of our busyness, the love we feel for another, the play of the wind in the trees. When we relax our attempt to get a hold on life, we start to appreciate the richness contained in the simplest things.”

I wonder how much more rich the experiences in each day could be, how emotionally available we could be, and how much more in line with our inner truths we would live if we practiced the power of the present moment.

The Majesty Within...

"When I was about fourteen or fifteen, I discovered some things inside of myself. I discovered that what was inside of me was infinite. That you could go down to the bottom of my soul and keep reaching and reaching...and reaching. That everybody was like that. The things, the power, the majesty we all have as human beings is just unthinkable, unfathomable...
and that's what I brought to my dancing."
~One Last Dance the movie
2003