Awakening from a decent night’s sleep a few days ago, I found strings of words inside my eyelids. I didn’t recognize them as my own—my assumption is they are angelic, though the distinction between inside and out can be blurry on the threshold between asleep and awake. I rose and went to my keyboard, tapped them into a document which I would typically drag into one of several  “Working On” folders.  The sentences have been reappearing when I close my eyes at night. though. My sense is they are not meant solely for me, so I share them here in case you are a member of the intended audience.

————————————-

This time that you call new is not a starting point. It is a continuation of the circle, the cycle.

Before all else—breathe in, breathe out.  In this vital rhythm find a willingness to dismiss the internal gatekeepers. They have too long chosen what you release and what you carry.  What is real will remain, for it is made of love which—like water— adjusts continually to the shape and size of its vessel.

So, breathe deeply. Slowly. Expand your capacity to receive all that goodness your world is starving for. Hold—the breath and the love—until you are sated, brimming. Until every cell that forms you ripens and rounds.

Now let it out—breath, attainment, love. Let it slip out on your slow exit winds. Watch it drift and be carried to the hungry souls in your sight—people and other creatures, leafing and rooted ones, those in flight, the water spirits that inhabit parched rivers and lakes. Notice how your lungs quietly contract, but the shape they resume is different—the tissues more elastic. How beautifully these life-giving pink bellows retain perfect memory of their capacity to welcome and hold. Feel their joy upon the outbreath. It is pure generosity, this exhale. It is a gift that your spirit-made vessel shares what it has cultivated even in the brief moments of one respiratory cycle.

You are each made of love.  Love is what created you, and love is what lives on when you leave your body.

This “new” year, your somewhat conjured demarcation between past and future, we offer you a doorway. Vision it as you wish—a garden gate in the meadow of your youth or a wee hobbit door in the old twisted oak that lives in the forest of your imagination, or the plain composite door in your living space.

Open it and see there is no single path laid out for you. Step through it and see that a hundred byroads meander and intersect, radiating outward in every direction. There is no wrong way to move forward. Close your eyes for a moment. When you lift your lids again let your feet choose their steps and feel yourself warmed by the rising sun of a deep and grounding trust. This will lead you to the people and places that need your presence.

You are more in tune than you realize. Release the need to distract yourself with the banal trappings of your generation and your circumstances. Drop the addiction to external guidance and turn your ears towards your own heart. The song you hear there is formed by the echoes of all the helpers who whisper and nudge you multiple times each day and in your dreams at night. Listen well, with great care, and know you are guided. You are not lost and you are never alone. We are but a breath away.

–Melinda

photo by Vladislav Babienko