I am struck anew tonight by how readily life brings our teachers to us, just when we arrive at the next stage in our curriculum and whether we know it or not. Teachers have always been important to me, for learning is the mother’s milk of my spirit, but what I’m finding now is that every being–bar none–is a teacher. If I can stay present enough to avail myself of the ones that are showing up, be they humans or animals or birds, reptiles, insects, or plants, trees, rocks, or single grains of sand, even the sky and all its receding inhabitants? I learn what I need to rise up and go on my way, better edified, prepared, and suited to make my own contribution.
This, I believe, is one of the great gifts of being human. Not limited to us, no, but surely ours. The ability to learn, to renew ourselves, to walk on while here. Each of our paths is utterly unique, the lessons paced for us and us alone, and yet every strand, every encounter, every single lesson is threaded into all that is: myriad individuals simply being in a collective older than time and tomorrow all told. Words are not sufficient. Being? Is.
Three days ago I slowed down, all of a sudden, weary to the bone with my previous pedal-to-the-metal approach to life and unwilling to go on with that another step. And oh! The guidance and joys, even bliss, and healing that have poured in. How easy it is to flow with life on earth rather than struggle to control and bend aspects of it to my will. How soothing it is to rest in the quiet space of loving it all, no exceptions, and rising to walk the path at my feet, trusting that walking on is in itself enough, a prayer, a blessing, a coming home to one’s self and finding legions already there.
