It’s been a stormy time.
Earlier this week, a massive storm passed through Northern California, flooding creeks, washing out roads, and downing dead tree branches.
An inner storm raged within me the same day of the big storm. An old disempowering pattern was up, expressing itself with clear, unadulterated intensity. No longer sitting in the shadows, it was moving out of me. But to let it leave, I had to sit with the storm, let it express itself without falling into fear, without identifying with the pattern and without invalidating myself.
The collective storm of the past several months has felt no less intense.
I’ve been looking within for a way of being that allows me to be with what is without adding one ounce of energy to the energy of conflict. To be a source of light in the most authentic form possible. The pull to join the fear and anger is strong. It has been, and continues to be, a moment by moment process, calling me to wake up to what I’m aligning with now… and now… and now.
A friend recently shared with me this from Herman Hesse:
When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
I’ve been with the trees a lot lately, and they’ve been teaching me:
Send your roots deep. Stand tall, centered, vertical.
Orient your attention towards the light of source. Weather the storms without identifying with them or attaching to them. Dead branches will break off in the storm. Let them. Allow your participation with this world to be the truest expression of your Being — beyond the conflict, beyond the hype, beyond the frenzy, beyond the shoulds, beyond the current of fear.
Once my inner storm left me earlier this week, a whole new experience of myself emerged. An unfamiliar flavor of inner freedom has filled the space once occupied by that disempowering pattern. Would this new sense of freedom have been possible had I fallen into struggle with the storming pattern? I don’t think so.
Earlier today, as I sat again with the trees, they whispered to me, “Dare to be steady, dare to be peaceful.” So, what else is there to do but to send my roots deep, stand centered and vertical, and keep orienting my gaze towards the light of source. And may my expression, sourced in steadiness and peace, be of service to myself and the world.
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