It’s the quiet moments that make me realize my heart has a fortress around it. When I look out at beauty, my chest aches for reasons beyond my grasp. My mind is racing, and I don’t know how to slow it. So I close my eyes, and for an instant, I pause and all goes blank. Quickly images fill my brain again, past and future battling it out. Eckhart Tolle suggests the now becomes present when we can begin to observe the thinking brain instead of let it rule our body, so I observe. My mind runs over lists repeatedly. These lists are futile in that they never stop. As I accomplish one task, another takes its place. It is insane this list making I allow to rule my life. The pressure squeezes my heart, and I can feel it rise until it is welling up in my eyes waiting to be released. I push it back down though. There are people here, strangers. If I cry, they will want to know why, and I don’t know the answer, nor do I want to have to come up with a reason. Perhaps it is something that cannot be put into words. I simply am…? I am as I am and it does not need explaining. To feel is more adequate than to describe.
The trees here are so still. Their trunks sturdy and rooted. I look at them and find comfort in knowing peace is possible.
The constancy of movement, the repetitive ripples in motion, the gentle gurgle of waves in contact with land. Infinite circles. Spiral amongst spiral of presence. Here and now defined without words, in sand and water.
These trees know the power of silence. Humans in their pain bodies at war. Trees see our cruelty, but they do not judge it. Their peaceful protest will win in the end long after we have destroyed each other. They will wait, observe, accept, and allow, and life will go on with or without us.
Filed under: Ireland Tagged: circle of life, eckhart tolle, meaning of life, meditation, nature, peace, present, reading, suffering, travel
