New Neighbors

 

Good News, Bad News
Everything Changes

Did you see the sky last night, around twilight?

Tuesday evenings I leave my wellness group about 5:40 p.m.  For the first time since the long-ago autumn, walking toward my car, it was miraculously still light, sunset taking her time sashaying across the western sky.

It’s changing.

Spring whispers to us, seducing us on her expanding light in the day, even though it has been freezing and snowy, with wind tearing away at shingles, with shutters blowing down the road, with tiny dogs at risk for air-bound travel.   

Yet spring comes.

We know everything changes.  We know we are born to die. We know people, places and things all morph, shape-shifting their way through time, through space, through our lives.

We just forget it.

Or perhaps we can’t really believe that they will change.  

Until they do.

Have you had something, some life-intervention, knock you (as we might say), up/side/your/head?

Life does get our attention.

Reality alters herself for us.

In Twelve Step we say, “Life does for us that which we cannot do for ourselves.”

Being human, you guys—what a dilemma.                    

How can we support ourselves in the ever-changing nature of our human lives?

I look to nature; there I find solace, beauty, ease.  The rhythms, the flow, the coming of day, the releasing into night—they all literally remind me.

They remind me that change is inevitable.

Change I like.  Change I might not.

Change I choose.  Change that is thrust upon me.

In the midst of this bitter, windy day, spring hovers.

In the midst of the darkest of nights, the daylight lurks.

Within the greatest chaos, there lives serenity and ease.

One breath away, as we allow ourselves to find, to be found by that which DOES NOT CHANGE, that part of ourselves, that part of our nature that is infinite, that is forever, that is always—as we practice returning there, the yo-yo-external-world can come and go.

We are held in the consistency, the stability, the predictability of that which is ALWAYS.

How odd.  How awe-filled.  How miraculous.

We are that ALWAYS.

That ALWAYS is us.

Nowhere to go.

Nothing much to do.

Just to practice the comings and the goings.

As we allow our humanity to be okay enough (our worry, our fear, our longing, our clinging, our headaches, our desires, our wild and wacky minds— fill in your blank), the ALWAYS emerges.

Can’t have one without the other.

It’s all true—human and divine.

It’s all sacred.

It’s all inevitable.

Happy almost-spring, dear friends.

Let’s relax into winter.

 

Dear Friends, what are you noticing, as winter continues to hold us in her grip, and spring flirts on the horizon?  What helps you stay steady-enough during change? What supports your flexibility and fluidity in life? As always, please let me know.  Your responses are true gifts to me. I am aruni@rnetworx.com.

All blessings,
Aruni

I never laughed so much, with such full-hearted participation.

I never cried with such freedom, deeply and fully, both inwardly and outwardly.

I never danced with such abandon, whipping around the room, hopping, flowing, inner critic banished.

I never so trusted myself, my words, my capacities.

I never felt so free.

I never learned as much—about people, about my response to them, about the wisdom teachings, about how to be with myself and others, about how to let it all be okay, as it was.

I was never so able to let it all be as it was.

I was never this close to Grace.

Okay, already.

By now you are probably hoping I’ll stop this litany and get specific.

What the heck, Aruni?  What are you doing?

I am teaching; I am leading a program.

Teaching is my zone, my flow state, my deepest of deepest homes.

I don’t tend to talk much about it.  It’s vague, it’s wild and wacky, it’s personal, deeply internally reflective of the blessings I have been given, the opportunities that have been mine, for giving, for receiving, for belonging, for teaching, for learning.

For becoming myself.

By creating the circumstances in which other people, you out there, hundreds and hundreds of you became more of you, I create the circumstances in which I became more of my authentic self, too.

By trusting the process, by allowing the simple teachings of relaxing into the obstacles in our lives, both internal and external, without judgment, all change became possible.

I watch.
I watch you and I watch me.  And I allow my doubt and my anxiety and I outlive it.  And all possibility emerges for all of us, both individually and collectively.

I watch us become ourselves.  

I watch us relate to one another with blocks melting, with hearts opening.

I watch.  In awe and profound relaxation.

I watch.

Creating a safe group process is like choosing home; It’s choosing ourselves, one moment at a time.

It’s believing in healing, in hope, in connection, with self and other and all.

It is.

I am telling you this because I believe we all need this space of freedom and flow, where the mind softens, where the body relaxes, where Grace emerges effortlessly.

For me, with a microphone in my hand, I am liberated.

I am taken home, deeply home, forever home.  Book-ended by the opening and closing om’s, I am freed.

The program ends, the mike is turned off, you all leave.

Home fades a bit.

The to do list emerges.

Anxiety loudens.

And so it goes.

Remembering.  Forgetting. Remembering again.

How easy to forget, how essential to remember:

Who we really are.

We are already home.

We just forget.

We all need the vehicles to return home.

For me that vehicle is—each and every one of you.

Dear friends, let me know what you do to return home.  What quiets you, opens you, frees you, engages you, relaxes you, fills you with energy and light? Please let me know. I am aruni@rnetworx.com.

Sending love, prayers, possibility,
Aruni

 

Dream  

Mom and Dad at the Colfax Market

 

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