Day 59: Held Close In

Uli and I had taken much of yesterday to drive up to Estes Park and enjoy fall beauty before the first snow sets in later this week. It was a restful day.

It was a day to practice – “Nowhere to go and nothing to do” - as Lao Tzu has often reminded me! Usually, we hike a trail (like this panoramic picture from a few years back) or wander in the forest around Rocky Mountain National Park. This time we could only wander from bench to bench along the lake, and then up to the Stanley Hotel porch where we enjoyed the magnificent view of the mountains.

It was an unusual day- for both of us. Neither of us have ever lived a particularly slow life! We are accomplished worker-bees, buzzing from dream to dream, place to place, still gathering in a harvest. For me – and Uli along with me - to be landed in the middle of this abrupt transition is a complicated reality. Not just at a physical level, which is slowly advancing day by day, but in some deep psychospiritual way we are being given a quiet hideaway season to replenish ourselves.

Curiously this video also came across my path the same day. A mystic relationship with a young octopus and an old clamshell.

What an amazing depiction of one of nature’s ways of creating safe haven – a home or escape route from what initially protects the young octopus from a dangerous world. I love how the octopus can ingeniously suck in the clamshell back into its original compacted form!

Yes, there are times when we as humans need to physically protect and distance ourselves from a vicious world, but somehow this is not today’s message I/We are experiencing through this underworld metaphoric relationship.

What speaks to me is the deepest need we as humans have to hunker down into our soul beings, into our truest essence of en-god-edness. That birthright relationship with All-That-Is which needs silence and solitude to experience the dark encompassing womb of original lovingkindness.

As a mystic, it is evident that this season of being slowed down and hidden away is a time to rest in this natural relationship of being beloved. Secretly at home, fully aware in this present-day embodiment.

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“We cannot afford to be unaware any longer. We must learn to see, listen, or touch and to recognize how broad and deep the Presence is if we are to truly care for our common home.” Richard Rohr’s meditations this week express the urgent need to “go inside”, to become aware more clearly of our part in this ongoing earth creation.

How are you being held, close-into a situation that might feel claustrophobic and entrapped?

What are you seeing, listening to, or recognizing about your private inner world?

When was the last time you closed the door and listened deeply to the inner teacher of your precious soul?

Back: Week 8

Next: Week 9