River Flows

On a very cold and crisp night at a Mountain Lodge in Lesotho, my family and I sat outside to enjoy the serene being(ness) of the surrounding mountains and the gentle yet powerful sounds of the river water just below, flowing assuredly and with such easy strength. Looking at it was meditative even as it beckoned for full awareness. The flow was sure and elegant, almost alive in the power it held. It brushed over rocks which in their stillness seemed to be in quiet alignment with the water, almost a willing part of the plan, as part of the journey as the water itself. They completed this not-so-unwitting circle. The silence and my quiet focus made it feel like the water was flowing within me too.

The attention was swift to my being, the life within. As without, as it were. The direction of water in the river is certain and when something in it, does not flow with the water, it is moved aside, discarded. I reflected that this is so with life too, that when you are not along with its flow, your experience of it feels off and out-of-balance. When you are not flowing in the direction life is going, the feeling is of being expunged, feeling dizzy and confused. And because we are life, and because balance and ease and harmony is our nature, we instinctively look for balance. This is a fantastic feedback ecosystem when we are awake to our inner workings and to the fact that life starts and ends within. When we are not however, we look for this balance where we can find it.

Since being in sync with life is where our power is, we spend laps and laps of time trying to get back to the feeling of being in the flow. We look at faces of people, which most times reflect our confusion and daze, and we want them to save us, to be our superheroes, and give us the balance we need. We take on fights on behalf of others so we can feel valuable. We please our parents and friends by being and by doing things inconsistent with how we really feel. We need their approval, their validation and ultimately their love, you see. We scratch and claw for balance. We buy scores and scores of fashion, getting a momentary feeling of aliveness when our peers validate us and tell us how awesome we look. Then the crash from the high happens, and we look for yet another fix. We speed on highways, drink a lot of alcohol, get high from praise. There is plenty that promises to restore us, that we allow ourselves to be eaten up, just to feel the momentary warmth of a mouth and body willing to swallow us whole, keep us in, and inevitably expel us from the other end, back into the cold and feeling even worse.

Yet, this is also a lived metaphor. It is as you believe. When you are aware of being chewed up and spat out by life, life rises up to the occasion, acts out your expulsion for you, in full colour, complete with sound effects. Life’s job is to wake you back up into the awareness of your surroundings. That you are in the flow, you are the flow, you are Life itself. What power!

Oh to be awake to look within, to see that we are life, that it all begins and ends within us and that life could never be removed from us or us from it. That kind of staying up leads to a beautifully balanced existence and experience of yourself, your divine self.