I have not written for a very long time,
I have been journeying……
And in that flow of experience,
I have come to understand many different things,
some with my mind, some with my body,
some with my soul, and others through the movement itself.
I’m going to pick up three words and place them in the palms of my hands
and continue my dialogue of changing…..perspective…..
The three words are essence, substance and life.
These three small, infinite words, were the three gifts I received
after being thrown into the speed of light and then out again
many years ago.
It’s taken me seven long years to find my way
in the transformative chrysalis,
that began with a loss of breath, his and mine,
only to both find it again, in new ways
and new dimensional perceptions and studies.
To have risen out of the ashes, like a phoenix,
after everything I had known or built up was seared away
by the heat and light of that speed,
I can only call grace.
To continue the search for words and experiences to further express
and live within and out of this new altered every day life,
is my quest, and herein lies the beginning of my musings.
The world I had created, explored and lived in
was rich, multi-layered and complex,
well built and well seasoned.
For years, I was held by a sense
of such loss as it all changed,
in one, precious moment,
until I began realizing it was a new beginning….
and the sooner I learned how to breathe
while birthing in the new, the better.
In my inner worlds of self,
I began experiencing life, the essence of life and it’s substance,
artistically, emotionally, perceptively in new ways,
and I was both grateful and bereft, often,
not knowing what to do, how to begin a new life,
and how to sort out what I felt.
Until I stopped trying,
and then realized that there was no new life to begin,
because the presence of life in all its forms and changes,
in it’s essence and substance,
is always present, and I could stop searching
and just be….alive within it.
The wordless expression of essences of this life,
kept pushing up against
what it looked like as a substance,
swinging back and forth
until all I knew I could do
was carry these three words in my basket,
my heart, my womb of worlds and my human willingness,
as a seed, or a pilgrimage,
until the quaking and metamorphosis stopped shifting
in my being-ness
and I could look out again.
So when
that quaking of shattering sorrow,
grief, suffering, and quiet discernment,
came to rest, I found my breath again,
that breath that feeds and
gives life what it needs
to carry on, and grow,
in order to discover that within it,
there is always a new wave of possibility, which constantly moves
between the substance and the essence,
the ebb and the flow, the substance and essence,
the sun and the moon,
the yin and the yang, the inner life and the outer life.
Twining that cannot do, or be, or live without the other.
And in that realization,
of the continuous letting go of one or the other,
consciously and unconsciously,
through uncontrollable circumstances,
of everything I was, of everything I knew and loved,
of everything I held on to as my world,
I found the key to perceiving……..
a new pulsing wisdom………
a living wisdom, a life force,
that knows how to sustain life,
fill life,
give life,
unfold life, and
it was flowing through me
in a new way.
Starting through a family, mother/son trauma
and being thrown into the speed of light,
I’ve come to know
was the invitation
and the awareness of a forceful pressing presence,
I called light.
Being willing to enter into these mysteries in a place called altered,
is where I’ve been, is where I am, in an up and down fashion,
going between,
searching.
And yet today, I realize the search is over.
The search for my new life, how to do it,
where, and why,…..because
I’ve already arrived in the present moment,
between the essence and substance of myself through time,
within the inhale and exhale of my breath,
but now I see it,
I feel it, I’m in it,
in the flow of this life, in the energy of this life,
and in the continuous waves of possibilities
filled with something I’m calling living wisdom.
And in this place, there’s a resonance, a fragrance,
a beauty, a grace, a tangibility that ultimately
has no name,
only a presence and a quickening
that can be felt as the pulse within a seed,
that can be seen as the beauty around a rose
and fostered within a touch and a movement of the body.
It has no form or destination,
only the grace of sensing and renewing
refreshing, through accompaniment,
choice and holding open the prepared spaces and places
and environments, where it can live and breathe,
this living wisdom….through personal choice to care for it
and birth it through personal intentions.
What else can one do
but foster genuine interest
to experience,
to participate,
to work out of ,
this something so divine,
with reverence and awe,
it gives breath to life itself.
And so today I
have arrived
again
in the centre of my life
in the centre of my being
in the circle of communing,
with a willingness to tend,
and in-tend…….the infinite, the endless
and the wordless eternal,
the spark of life,
this presence of a
magnificent living wisdom,
that flows through all of us,
in devotion, consciousness,
awareness, compassion, love
peacefulness and grace.
written by Jill LaBelle Sophie
“This that we have now is not imagination
It is not joy or sadness
Not grief or elation
These things come and go
This is the presence that doesn’t”
Rumi