Into the wind he leans. Feeling the imperceptible, he is held in its arms… this magic of nature cradling his body to avoid his fate of nature… for without the wind he would surely fall.
I remember the first time I saw the Grand Canyon. Its sheer beauty was mystifying. Honestly, it looked like a painting. Something that we should be able to reach our hand out to… and touch it. To feel its texture and to curve our fingertips around the three dimensional curves and crevices. The mixture or softness and yet knowing it is stone. The vast array of colors… purples, reds, greens, beiges… But it isn’t a painting done by man…it is a real place that entices a person. It entices us to explore. It bids us to walk into its depth but we can tell it is a long trek… and there are a few that do. The sheer beauty of its mystery calls us to explore it in our minds. We begin to wonder about its development. How did such creative beauty take place? Some of us are content with just playing at the top of the rims. Some of us plan out camping trips…or riding down the river deep below us… some run the trail rim to rim to rim. It is a place that captures us and like the temptress that it is bids us back to enjoy its beauty.
I also remember the first time I drove to the Grand Canyon. I was driving outside from Flagstaff, Az. I was enjoying the scenery… this was long before the distractions of cell phones, tablets, and XM-radio. The distant mountain peaks were amazing… I love the scenery of that area… I could have stayed for days just mentally and physically soaking in the beauty of this place. However, my destination was a place called the Grand Canyon. I wondered when I would get there. It seemed out of place in my mind at the time. I thought surely I must have been traveling in the wrong direction until…. I saw a line of cars. I smile in my heart as I remember thinking to myself… “really? this is it?” The big archway made of timber silently in bold letters welcomed us to the place that holds mystery. The anticipation was palpable. I almost turned into the first parking area that I saw but thankfully I waited. I was able to rest my car near the main lodge. I remember the big common area as I walked in…so majestic… I thought to myself if the walls could talk they would grow old just from the length of all its own stories.
Then I walked outside to the rim…
It is amazing how we look into our own life. We see the present but yet don’t really live in it. We see the future for what we want it to be yet we miss the beauty of what it could be. There are stories in the present that we are not attuned to hearing. We miss the sounds of a person’s heartbeat because we are so enamored with the shallowness of the trinket. Have you been in a room that holds the trinkets from a carnival or a bowling alley toy machine… Yes, they hold memories of times past but it just seems cheap. Yes, we need shallow moments to rest from the deep but to stay in the shallow end never strengthens us. We spiritually, physically and mentally need both, the shallow and the deep.
So, we walk to the edge of the “rim” and instead of looking into the beauty of what life can be… and is meant to be… we focus at the ”currant bush” that we find along the path.
What if we merely glanced at the canyon and said “wow that is beautiful” then just walked away. What if we heard of friend that drove to the Grand Canyon and they never really saw it, we would wonder what they were thinking.
We live in a distracted world. We are a distracted people. We wander around the “high desert plains” and miss the beauty of a life that is just right next to us. Oh, there is a beauty of the “high desert plains”… please don’t think that I am saying there isn’t. It is just that we miss the beauty of another part of who are or at least are meant to be.
So, dream as big your heart can hold but remember that our hearts has depth that we cannot even imagine. Move in this present moment willing to accept the different emotions that are brought into our lives through all sorts of experiences. We will find inner depth and beauty while on our mats in a yoga class… and we can also find it in our cars parked out in a traffic jam on the interstate… it is a matter of where we take ourselves in this journey called life. Allow the emotions to become a fluid teacher; they are never meant to be held but only to be touched.
It is now just past sunrise… let the light of this day bring to us a sense of awareness. Lean into the moment and let the Mystery of it all hold us up in their invisible arms.
Breaking script…Namaste
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