The Wisdom of the Elements

Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon?  I have, some time ago.  Nothing could have prepared me for the absolute breath-taking view.  You don’t realize how very tiny you are until you stand beside it, feel the ancient energy of it and imagine its creation.  I don’t know exactly why, but I was remembering the Grand Canyon in a dream I had a few nights ago.  I didn’t recall it for its aesthetic beauty and grandeur.  I recalled it because of what my mind has been wrestling with forever, it seems.

The steadfast rock and Earth surrounds us, water flows within and around us.  Great rivers erode the rock slowly over time and yet in some place and at some times, the work of the water flowing etches gently and cuts deeply into the Earth.  If you think about it or truly realize it, as stunningly beautiful as the Grand Canyon is – remember, it was created by water flowing over rock and wind whipping through it over time. I think of us, mere mortals, our daily trials and tribulations and even the minor things we tend to get so upset about.  To me, it’s all like water flowing over rocks and wind whipping through.  We may be etched and cut into by the various elements of existence that flow around and through us in our experience but we are no less beautiful in the end than before our lives began.

We do so many things, we strive to achieve this or that, to acquire, to gather and hold things to us and that is a funny thing to me.  Nothing remains forever just as it is.  Life here is forever changing, merging, falling away - blowing away even. We fly, we crash, and we tumble and flow.  Just like the wind, the water, just like the rocks we live upon.  We can stand firm in the fullness of our being and let life flow within and around us.  It doesn’t matter what we do, what we achieve, what we learn or acquire, the part of us that witnesses all of our life-experience, remains the same – unharmed and ever transformed.  We live, we breathe and we die but there is that part of us that remains untouched like the day we were born, pure and pristine.  It doesn’t matter what we go through and grow through because in the end, that pure and pristine part of us lives on.

The point of this is not that you should not acquire, grow or learn as you live and breathe in this life but rather that you should understand what remains and what changes.  In a way, what remains and changes is the same.  That is confusing in a way.  Perhaps it is all about aspects and perspectives of what we choose, how we take in an experience or how it is we might use it?  We ARE.  No matter what we have or don’t, who supports us or won’t, how we live or die – no matter what, we still ARE.  We are made neither greater nor lesser by what we do really.  We still ARE.  If we dress Class Act, or bare cozy and comfy, we still just ARE.  I think that the more I live, the more I understand what nature is trying so hard to teach us.

These observations and thoughts didn’t come to me all at once.   These thoughts didn’t occur to or comfort me as I acquired and gathered, or while I surrendered and lost.  Whether I was climbing ladders, or admitting defeat, I still AM.  There is a part of me that remains pure and pristine no matter what it is I mire myself in.  It seems that what I do, is for my entertainment, because I feel moved to do this or that.  It feels good sometimes to do this and that.  It feels bad sometimes to do this or that.  But when the feelings of whatever it is I am or was engaged in fade, I remain just as whole as I was.  I still AM.

I go back to my memories of the Grand Canyon and take a slow and easy breath in and out. The water is not evil because it cut the walls of the canyon.  The colorful rocks that have withstood the years and seasons are not weak because they stood still.  No matter what the experience, they still ARE and yet they are beautifully transformed in a way by the experience but their essence and their power is not lost or made lesser by interaction with the elements.  When I see the rocks now, I feel gratitude and deep appreciation for their existence.  When I see the rain, water flowing – I feel grateful and a deep affinity for it’s existence.  When the wind blows it carries aspects of rock and water and I’m grateful as the air I breathe carries the pure power of transformation.  When I feel the heat of the sun, I am reminded of the gifts of transformation it too brings.  These things can harm and support me but I am made neither greater nor lesser for my experience of them.

You, in your lives, living day in and day out, working and achieving or learning and growing – you are made no greater or lesser as a result of your experience.  Even though you may be transformed willingly or unwillingly remember that there is an aspect of you that will remain pure and pristine as the day you were born.  Live, laugh, play and love.  Enjoy fully the richness of your experience here.  Appreciate your surroundings, check in now and then to see if you find value in what you are learning. Strive if you feel moved to – to understand all of your amazing and magical teachers in this life.  Everything matters. You too matter.  Never mind how life has shaped you, cut through you or changed you.  Your soul is still beautiful and filled with magic.  You still ARE.  Blessings of great love to you.

Copyright 2020, Jaie Hart (Photo NPS.org)

No Victim of the Wind

Another cool and early morning up before the sun could greet me.  Many thoughts have I from so many sources taking hold.  Understanding comes in leaps and bounds or not at all for long periods of time, it seems in my little world.  I watched a few leaves let loose from the tree in this morning’s twilight and my being  launched into a stream of feeling.  As the feelings struggled for thoughts to label them, my mind reached back across the span of my life for its recurring themes.  Looking back I realize that at times in my life I have created a thought process in which I was merely a helpless leaf blown in the wind.  While I may at times have identified with the leaf blown helplessly in the wind, the soul in me now knows and begins to truly understand with all the feeling of existence, I am neither now nor have I ever been merely a victim of the wind.  With a lifetime of hard-won lessons I have come to realize that I am not just the leaf but also the wind.  Going deeper within and engaging in further reflection and introspection beyond the realization or identification with being the wind itself,  I realize that I am also the waves of temperatures disruptive…creating the hot or cold convection that generated the impetus behind the wind.

The words upon this page representing the feelings washing over me just now are most difficult to articulate.  These waves of understanding come in the feelings of deep soul knowing that take much time and thought not to understand but to put into words.  Lifetimes of lessons can sometimes download into consciousness in an instant taking one much time to fully taste the sweetness of understanding.  I revel both in the process of tasting understanding but also the process of striving for it.  With my very human mind operating at superficial levels, there can be no understanding at all.  It’s almost as if there is this limited understanding of the mind and this full knowingness of the heart (read soul) that wrestles joyously with much difficulty to “get” what’s trying so hard to come in…or, well, rise to the surface of conscious cognition.  I am momentarily distracted by process as I type these words.  A common construct for me that leaves me hopelessly trapped inside of a box from which nothing can be properly understood.  Exiting procedural thoughts, I go back to the memory that started this string of thoughts and realizations and feel the coolness of the morning swirling around me while my thoughts drift in silent contemplation.

When I watched the leaves as they fell from the tree in the half-light of the morning, I too remembered how many times I have fallen into themes of existence thinking I had no power to soar.  Before the realization of the wind and the source behind its currents, I saw and felt with full measure the experience of falling time and time again, frustrated that I couldn’t hold on to something.  The real problem was that I couldn’t let go of a construct or, rather, a mis-understanding of the framework within which I truly existed.  It’s hard to experience and step back from the experiencing but until you find a way, there is no way to truly understand what is really happening beyond the perceptions environmental psychology has created within the mind.  So, I experienced helplessness at the mercy of the breeze caused by unintentional conditions in my life metaphorically speaking. In so doing, I gave away all of my power to everyone and everything around me never once understanding I was thinking so deeply within the box that I’d be trapped there an eternity if I didn’t do something different.  When repeating the same series of thoughts and actions over and over only ever resulted in more of the same discomfort and disharmony in my life, at some point the thought occurred to me that perhaps certain repeating messages and messengers were placed on my path for a reason.  From there began the realization that I was the one who agreed to take on both messengers and messages.  I learned over much time and through many frustrated and angry tears that I only ever had myself to control and I was never helpless to do that.  But, in my own defense, you can’t know what you don’t know and the only way to know anything is to learn through first-hand experience (or so it seems for me, at least).

At one point in my life in the not-too distant past, I stood alone with all that came before upended in emotional chaos and then came the urge to retreat.   I stepped out of and back from all of my creations, messengers and messages and in mere moments understood the creations were mine even if I did not know how or why.  All of the struggle, the tears, the emotions and pain, disappeared like the ground mist in full morning sunlight.  When I chose to relax and decided to exist neither in the past nor hide out in some worry over the future, the disruptive clash of temperatures (read emotion) stabilized and the winds (read percpetions) no longer blew.   I was thrilled beyond belief and relaxed even further into the stillness of presence.  In the peace created so fully in the absence of my resistance to my own life, I rested upon the land of pure existence and being-ness that  I also created within the whole of my experience.   Just as I would, me being me, I set for myself confirmation and validation in an endless stream of feeling that took years to understand.  And believe me, I endeavor to understand so much more still.  In all of these words and prior experience, I could have saved myself so much time had I learned to align more with a simpler concept/term, a concept/term whose essence hummed humbly and silently in the background of my consciousness patiently awaiting recognition all along.  Stepping fully outside of the box now, understanding much better the whole of my own creations now and trusting implicitly the reasons will be revealed to me by me in perfect time, the words come so clearly now in feeling.  Simply…beautifully…powerfully—I AM.

(c) 2013 Jaie Hart (photo copyright also mine)