#4 It is This and More

I recently opened a folder, full with pieces that I wrote when I was at a Writer’s Retreat at Xenia, on Bowen Island in February 2022. We had space one day to move freely and I chose to place my computer in my BeLoved orange backpack and begin walking. Up, up, up a path I went. When I began to notice words come, I decided to sit and type them, recording them in real time, as they flowed. Later, I went back and numbered each piece in the order it came along with the first line that came, the first line that I typed.

It is this and more.

And it takes diligence, volition, commitment and practice to arrive here.

It is not given.

It is a journey and that is the fun.  There is no end point, no end to this journey. There is no “I have arrived and therefore I am done.”

No, it is not this. Do not be deceived by this illusion.

It is continuous, ongoing, never ending always evolving, shifting and changing.

With each breath, each moment there is newness, we meet ourselves here in this new moment

This is life, always encountering the unknown with each moment that meets us, that greets us, with each inhalation and exhalation there is newness. Yes, with each exhalation and inhalation there is newness, birth and death, death and birth one giving rise to the other, one giving experience to the other, continuous cycle on and on it goes

How do we encounter the unknown? We breathe. We step. We live fully.

With each step, with each breath, we build capacity within ourselves, each and every time we build. Each and every time we are building.

We each breath, we each step, we each fall, with each rise we back ourselves, we come to rely on ourselves, not others, ourselves. Of course, others are along for the journey, witnessing and encouraging, guiding and supporting, but it is us, as the individual who is doing the work who is showing up who is receiving and giving simultaneously.

Once we know this, once we touch this, grasp this knowingness, a deep sense of power and ease arrives, birthed and born from our own knowing, our own backing. We birth this within ourselves again and again and again.

In this birth and death of each moment, with each breath we step into the unknown, with the knowing that we are backed, fully and wholly by ourselves and that we have fallen and risen and we will again and again and again. For there is no end, there is no final destination to arrive to, a place to be, a box to tick, something to earn. No, it is not this.  What meets us is the unknown in the known itself, the knowing that we are here, with ourselves, supporting ourselves, always held, always backed, always loved.

For we are love itself.

We have only forgotten and that is the beauty of the birth and death, the falling and rising, the forgetting and remembering. For we can only remember once we have forgotten.  And oh how blissful it is when we remember.