Every time I cross a bridge now I allow the pause, the traversing, to be felt.
Rather than a ‘crossing’, a getting from one side to the other, it’s transformed into a being with, a savouring of. Over the years this has become an integrated micro-sadhana that has brought a depth of inquiry and some true remapping of the system.
I slow it way down. I feel each step and breath in that space of hinging between. It can become a true walking meditation. I really had to remember this way of being. I was seduced as a young girl into the myth of goal orientation, of the over-achievement complex based on the fallacy that arriving first meant being worthy (Pitta much?). It didn’t help that our culture reveres such a diseased way of racing through life; that intensity, striving and push have been equated as markers of our worthiness. This way is so unsustainable, so exhausting, so stress-inducing, so life-alienating.
Any of you know this too well?
Then I swung to the other extreme in an attempt to bring balance, believing for awhile that doing could not hold within it stillness and ease. Boy has life brought me great teachings in all of the requests it has had of me and all that it has asked me to be a vessel of.
So now the Sadhana is found in the exploration of that ‘Madhyama Marga’, in that middle path of moving with life’s current, which sometimes requires the dynamic, but is never in opposition to enjoying the steps that find themselves kissing rickety bridges just like this one.
So, as we enter this Pitta Summer Season, may this be a little invitation to us all. We don’t need to race, you’re not going to miss out, life isn’t going to pass you by, and you surely don’t need to ‘make it happen’. I feel like breath enters just sharing this right now.
May it be a beautiful + easeful Summer ☀️🤍☀️
