It’s everywhere. It’s on the leaves, in the trees, diving off the branches. Swimming through the air, summersaulting across the table. Exploding in the clouds and sprinting across the sky.
Look inside yourself for your inner wisdom, and you will surely find it. It comes for you. Like a bee, waffling through the air. Like an eagle, swooping to the ground. It’s the water, carving paths through mountains, waiting for a reunion with you in the deltas.
Every thought can take you to it. Be still. You are here as these thoughts arise. You are here as they dissipate. Whether they pour sorrow like rain, or despair like hail, you are here. Torrents, hurricanes, and tornadoes: Fury, rage, exasperation. Whatever storm arises, its you who watches them undamaged.
Do not be afraid. Each and every experience is a flower blooming in your field of life. Little celebrations are born as seeds, soaking up the nutrients in its soil. Your ambition, your love, your sacrifice are your roots. And from your deep presence, the stalk of experience breeches the surface, rising up past the ground and reaching for the sky. Your generosity, your holidays, your family: They are the sweet fruits and fancy leaves blooming. Life is budding, and flowering.
And wilting. Know your loss is not accidental. Wisdom uses grief to meet you, too. Each dying branch on a great oak tree is destined to fall. Life makes way for more life, and the oak becomes magnificent and proud. But even the mighty tree has an expiration, and one day it falls and clears way for new life.
The mind, and the identity your mind has assumed of you, is safe to perish like the great oak. Underneath the bark, the decay, the microbes and decomposers, is a richness to life no single being could encompass. Wisdom will take you there, to the place beyond encompassing. Which roll-e-pollie can claim it decomposed the oak? Which earth worm can claim it moved the soil for garden? No single thought or identity can ever encompass it. It is beyond itself. Life is beyond itself.
Turn to your inner wisdom and look there. It will lead you to the bliss that is everywhere. On the leaves, in the trees, diving off the branches.
~David Hemphill
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