Live like a river flows

‘I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.’ John O’Donohue. 

I haven’t written in this way for a while. The impulse is to pause for the right words or I could just let them rise up and roar their way into existence. They live inside the moments before my mind starts to grasp and they reach for themselves in a pure stream of almost already spoken. This is the way of flow. It is in the always already known. The part of you that needs no control or careful driving. No steering or manipulation. Your deepest wisdom and inner knowing, carefully curated by the intelligence of life. 

To drop the trying and step into the stream is an act of surrender. Carried by an endless flow that has no seeming direction, my teacher Christopher Wallis talks about sitting in sweet anticipation of nothing in particular. Life simply present to itself. Life, you, consciousness simply being present to all the other forms, vibrations, expressions of itself, happening inside and outside, all of the time.

But we can live so far from this. Caught in the mind trance, we move away from ourselves and what is really happening in the moment. Pema Chodron describes our obsession with thought as a life where we are both deaf and blind. Standing in a field of wildflowers with a hood over our heads because we can’t see or hear the beauty that is infinitely pressed into what is truly alive. 

If we offer our entire attention to something – a flower, a human, a nebulous gathering of particles in the sky that we call ‘cloud’ – if we truly offer our whole attention to that one thing, we are stopped in our tracks. Shaken out of our reverie. Held in the presence of the mystery and it is in those moments that we truly enter into a relationship with the real. Because what is real? Your throughts? Your ideas about what is happening in this moment? Or what is happening in this moment? Your thoughts are also happening but they are not the only show in town. Tara Brach talks about the incessant switching of mind channels, from past to present to worry and concern but, she says, rarely do we find ourselves tuned into the Discovery Channel. 

What would it be like to sit on the peak of the present moment and live from a place of gentle curiosity? Not knowing what comes next and being perfectly at peace with that. Control and planning will shake their busy heads but we can smile at them and allow our finger bones to soften and curl, loosening our grip and free falling into the always open arms of surrender. Because anything can happen when you let go of control and that’s the problem, right. We want to make sure that what will happen is how we want it to be but what if we could trust that what happens is exactly what we need it to be. What it we trust that life will carry us to unexpected places and that’s ok. That we might arrive with no map, no compass, no directions and not be lost.

To trust in life’s course is to become intimate with life itself. It is the way of ease, grace and refined intuition. Of profound connection to the part of us that always already knows. The subtle and sublime language that whispers, ‘this way, this way, this way’. Intuitive living and deep trust is a practice that is carved into my heart as a facilitator and I believe in holding a space where you attune to your own wisdom and walk away guided by your own self. 

On October 25-27 I am deeply honoured to offer these teachings to the community at Moksha Yoga in Melbourne over a sweet and immersive weekend of study, practice and investigation.

Together we will remember our deepest knowing through philosophy, āsana, meditation, inquiry, free movement and embodiment practices that clarify the waters and still the waves so we can see and hear more easily.

I’d love to meet you there and early bird ends Friday October 11th. To secure your spot, click the link below.

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https://www.mokshayoga.com.au/event/trust-flow-weekend-immersion/