Osa Pennisula, Costa Rica
After weeks now of “working” to become seed, I am beginning to understand the challenge of it, AND the great dilemma that this delivers to us as a nation…a world of humans whose velocity is skyrocketing. At this precarious moment on the planet, we are asked to leap further and faster into action to care for and protect the planet and yet, simultaneously it seems that if we don’t learn to slow and even STOP, we are in grave danger of burning ourselves out…our bodies, like earth’s body, cannot sustain such constant high running speed and use of precious resources.
I was struck when I ran across this quote:
So it came time
for me to cede myself
and I chose
the wind
to be delivered to
(Mansion: Ammons)
It grabbed for my attention…that word…”cede.” I had never known it and yet in my “becoming seed” phase now, this word that sounded identical wanted to be known by me. I needed to know it. I went to the dictionary immediately.
CEDE: to surrender, to yield, relinquish, abandon, grant, transfer, convey
This was exactly what was required of me now…and in many ways it is just what a seed must do and what we all must do in order to allow maximum transformation! Some magical elixer of surrendering in order for another way to arise.
And yet…and yet…do we remember how? Can we retrieve it from the long lost annals of our bodies? Here in Costa Rica, the environment colludes in this mandate…mid-day the heat rises, the animals go quiet but for the rhythmic lulling of the cicadas and insects, and the world demands that we go horizontal. The ocean provides an intoxicating lullaby. The heat becomes the heavy moist blanket of dreamtime reality.
After two weeks here on the Osa Penninsula, with an extravagant profusion of wild overt creation energy companioned with a humidity and temperature that require stopping at it’s peak times, I sense the caution that is somehow held in my body as I approach stilling. Is my nervous system wired directly to a global internet system of a highspeed inter-netting of bodily systems that only have one setting called “on”? Is it somehow frightened of a complete and thorough stopping?
My body corroborated by getting me sick last week…giving me one more reason that my mind could understand that would have me lay still for the majority of the day. The body is constantly offering us queues for when it needs rest and yet so many of ignore it’s brilliant and wise messaging system.
And perhaps we will not find our way back to coming into the complete and expansive territory of true stillness, but what about pausing for beauty?
As I write this, I am sitting in a hand made wooden chair in a gorgeous yet rustic, open air lodge strewn with hammocks and covered with thatched roofing…wild tropical gardens surround and the scent-uous air is filled with flower’s allure. Just now I put the computer down as I heard the movement of branches overhead that alerted me that the Howler Monkey troop was moving through. I went out with my binoculars to gaze upon them as some of them napped in the high branches, furred hands and feet hanging off either side of the branch, others were in the mango tree feasting on sweet ripe fruits….mamas sat in tree joints holding babies….and then their enormous sound came and filled my heart. Taking this in refreshes me. Simply.
I offer the possibility that perhaps this need for pausing is not necessarily a mandate for a tropical vacation, but for creating a practice that fits into YOUR days and in YOUR ways. What beauty might you be able to pause for? What is nearby that wants to be seen by you that you find beautiful? or what book calls? in your heart how do you experience beauty that you could bring conscious to? how about a phone call to pause for love and communication? Surely love and beauty surround, if we stop to become aware and receive it…
and what if…
WHAT IF,
it is in the stopping and taking in of THAT elixir, that allows it to grow and expand?
Is it not so that when we are seen for our truest essence, in our beauty, that we blossom. I believe it is true for all things.
We long to be seen, admired, appreciated…or perhaps simply noticed, and in that, we are revitalized.
The taking in of this beauty in another too, is nourishing…
a sacred reciprocal nourishing practice for our time.
~~~
Take the time to stop and take in beauty…
now.