Dear Loves,
On this day of gratitude I found myself trotting on the beach in the footsteps of this new lover in my life. Running on the beach is wonderful and often not easy for this one here writing when you are sinking in the soft sand. Ugh! Maybe it's my lack of mula bandha (insert smiley face here), but I start to feel so incredibly heavy and every excuse to not run comes up. Yesterday I found it easier when I eventually ran right on top of the seaweed and today it was Ben's footsteps. It was like having someone break trail out in the backcountry. So grateful. As long as I was able to hit his footsteps it all seemed possible, there was something to spring off of. Sometimes his steps were washed away and I would start sinking again, but then I would find them again and as more and more people appeared on the beach I would lose his steps, but then I would start to use others steps to spring off of. I was just reminded how incredibly supported I am and how we ALL are. Just tune into it for a moment how incredibly supported you are, even if it's just your next breath....It puts you automatically in a state of gratitude and then you start to remember this is who you are. You have been supported all along. That is why you are here having this experience of life.
Personally I have been working thru some heavy stuff lately, but I have to say as soon as I tune into how supported I am it just makes it all possible, doable. And I have say, it's thru these tougher more challenging times in our life that we look back and see they were also the best times and that is because we were learning about ourselves and growing. Consciousness was expanding. I feel so grateful that I am getting to spend this last week with my Dad here in Florida. The other night he was sharing stories of being a marine in Vietnam and he summed up the night talk with his year in Vietnam was the worst time in his life and the best time in his life at the same time. To the mind that can sound crazy when you have a pretty good chance that you are going to get killed, but what he learned about life in that time was profound. It's getting around what the mind thinks life should look like or wants it to look like, where the support is suppose to come from. I have found all that does is cause suffering and in fact block the support/love that wants to come in.
It is really devastating what has been happening in California with these fires. My sister and her family and home were able to escape the fire in Malibu, but still there was smoke damage to the property. It doesn't take much to feel a sense of gratitude in these times when we see and experience great loss and it is also in these times that we really get to see what truly matters. When we see what truly matters there is this overwhelming feeling to serve, to give, to be support for others and we discover, actually remember there is no 'other'.
So on this day of gratitude, I would like to bow to you all of you. It's all of you that give me that springboard of support to keep me going, even when it feels heavy, keep me waking up to who I really am. If I could insert the theme song to Chariots of Fire it would go here. We got this loves!
Thank you, thank you and may you feel how tremendously loved and supported you are.
Gratefully yours,
Shari
