Transforming, Like Water

"There is nothing permanent except change."

-Heraclitus

Since I wrote my last newsletter, back in February, I feel like I am a completely different person. Even though most of the physical, tangible aspects of my life remain unchanged - the way that I see them, feel them, and understand them has radically shifted. You see, with each breath I take, I am transforming, maturing. With each sunrise and sunset I gift myself the opportunity to see my life in a completely new way. With each astrological cycle, I welcome the experience of transformation and surrender to the complexity of the evolution of creation itself.

I let go, willingly, to all that does not serve my ability to be a channel for earth's intelligence, beauty, and creativity. 

I write this with grief in my heart, because while I welcome this process, it is not without the heaviness of my humanness, the density of my desires, and the fear of the unknown and the mystery. But, I allow the tears to well up in my throat, choking my ability to cry out for it all to stop, to slow down, and I allow the waters of life to fall down my cheeks and across my chest because I trust that this moment too, is temporary. 

They say that before 500 BCE, we were in the philosophical axial age. A period before the concepts of progress and evolution were invented. These ideas of spiritual attainment, personal development, and collective evolution were unknown to our pre-axial ancestors, who lived in a reality of predictable and ordered cycles of change, rebirth, and interdependency. 

I feel that the concept of transformation, rather than progress or evolution, is most akin to the philosophy of our ancestors. Transformation contains the meaning of, "a metamorphosis during the life cycle of an animal"... a natural process over which we have little control. Our bodies are going to change, they are going to transform, and eventually, they are going to die and go back to the earth from which we came. 

What will we do with the time in between? How can we ease this process of transformation? How can we make it a little bit more gentle, a little softer? How can we hold each other a bit more closely, with more love and compassion, as we all make this great journey through our lives to home back in the sky and the dirt?

For so much of my life, I have been filled with so much fire. So much passion, vision, opinion, and ambition. I have always taken the road less travelled and it was generally the more difficult path. I have been committed to learning the hard way at every possible opportunity. I felt that there was a power in that. I found power in going the deepest, the darkest, in climbing the most difficult spiritual mountains. But, for what? What did I think I would find there? Guess what is on the other side of that mountain... more life. Yup, that's all that's there. More life to keep living. More bills to pay, relationships to navigate, mundane tasks to fulfill. It doesn't matter how many mystical experiences, or psychedelic initiations, or realizations I have... life is going to be there beckoning me back to simplicity of caring for a body, a home, animals, and family. That is all there really is. 

Perhaps it was the three weeks I recently spent in the ocean in Costa Rica. That feeling of daily communion with the waters of our beautiful earth. Just being out there, by myself with a surfboard... feeling my overwhelming fear and awe as the waves came crashing over me. It was like being out there in the ocean showed me that there is no where to get to. This life isn't a race, it's not a competition, and you definitely can't win. There is always another set coming, maybe it will be big, maybe small, maybe you'll get a break to catch your breath, or maybe you won't. What matters is that we meet whatever comes with a clear mind, an open heart, and a sense of joy. Because those moments of peace and pleasure in the water.... nothing compares to that. 

I am welcoming more of this energy of water into my transformative process in this life. Water is life-giving, nourishing, responsive. It is our womb, our tears, and our blood. Water is ever-changing, the ultimate shapeshifter, moving through all beings and life on our planet. 

So... I ask you... where can you soften in your life? Where can you allow transformation and metamorphosis with grace and ease? In what areas of your life can you remember to be more like water... to flow, trust, and become who you are destined to be - even if only for a moment.