sunshine

 

By Carolyn Riker

Sometimes, I’m not okay and knowing that is okay.

There are days, I can’t find the silver lining or an upbeat message. I become incredibly self-critical and extra quiet.

I pull farther away from extraneous noise because I know there’s only so much of me left and I’m afraid I’ll lose that part of me. Sometimes, I am so tired of giving, being, doing and living, I have to pull the plug and stop the vacuum of life sucking me dry.

And even when I only have tiny chances, I go outside. It is where I recuperate.

I am reminded nature is one of the few places that gives unconditionally. I don’t have to ask for anything. I can close my eyes and see, listen and breathe. There’s no need to have a steady conversation. I don’t have to think as much or at all. The pressure to be more and do more dissolves with each step.

Nature has been a steady, trustworthy friend.

For much of my lifetime, I could be found outside digging and planting. As a child, I spent countless hours creating elaborate tree forts in my mind. Woodland critters spoke to me.

I reach out to nature for support and advice. We walk together through the corners of my holographic mind’s eye.

I submit to silence and savor her incredible wisdom. I let nature assist and it becomes part of my inner refuge and healing.

Mr. Rainer Rilke, my dear dead friend writes:

“If you trust in Nature, in what is simple in Nature, in the same Things that hardly anyone sees…if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves…Then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps…but in your innermost awareness, “awakeness” and knowledge.”

Maybe we have to lose our mind a little so we can see between the moss and stone and ever so gently drift to the tips of an evergreen. It is there I am supported by the spirits of deciduous arms, while listening to a feathered choral of “I am enough. We all are.”

We are aspects of a golden ratio in an endless prism of light and dark; expanding and folding, creating and giving.

By giving our self time to restore, we touch into a seamlessness of infinity.

Yesterday, a rose named Peace whispered,

“You are perfectly flawed in 1001 glorious ways. This is not negative but real. It’s what makes you unique. You have made mistakes and yet you have learned. You are tired and need rest. Let me be your arms as I unfold into your pain. Let me be your softness and let my thorns protect you from those who try to trespass.”

I breathe a little easier when I see how the sun and shadows wrap a tree. I walk with the trunks and branches. We become one. Sky meets earth and mountains tremble.

Maybe just maybe trying to figure it-all-out, is a way to hold on. Lately, I’ve been meditating through tears. It is an uprising of grief and even anger. .

My heart is expanding and needs more room. I tend to fold inward but now leaning back surprisingly feels amazingly good (and scary too).

I am witnessing a healthy rage it rumbles and gives me a different sort of strength.

I am divorcing from my former selves and stepping into a new light and life.

I am reuniting with all of me and it is shocking. It takes time to adjust to the shifts.

I breathe a little easier, when I turn the outer dial way down and find tiny respites of relaxing.

The other day, while meditating outside, I drifted into a light peaceful snooze. It felt as if a zillion and one rays of sunlight kissed me. Maybe those short, sweet sunspot sleeps, are infused with self-love and just what I needed.

I believe so.

I’m not being selfish or mean or inconsiderate.

I have to retrain myself from thinking this way and understand when I take time for myself, I see crimson, pomegranate and a lemony zest of succulent creativeness; it’s my well of gifted madness.

Each day I get stronger as I sail away into quietness, knowing when my words are tired and my thoughts are heavy, I can still hear the foghorn and know there’s light-in-the-house.

I will safely stretch my anchors, into the four corners of vayu and sound.

I breathe a little easier knowing my darkness also has light. I stand with nature for it is always, always with me.

And…

My heart flutters a sweet, soulful song, knowing, I am okay—just the way I am. I am finding the real me.

 

Photo: (source)

Editor: Dana Gornall

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