They are always leaving, but they are never gone

It could have been the heat, the thirst, or maybe the fact that I was exhausted.  This morning I attended a restorative yoga class where we practiced mudras that represented gratitude. It was impossible not to feel the heart opening up.

But at the end of the practice, an image came to me during the final relaxation.  As much as I tried to quiet it down, it just insisted on staying. So I let it, I stopped resisting and paid attention to what it wanted to show me. 

I saw the most delicious creek. Its crystalline, chill water runs while producing the calming sound of a splashing stream in contact with the pebbles on the bottom and on the sides. It was so relaxing! I realized how I wanted to get in and stay there while the water passed.  It felt cleansing and renovating. I needed it so badly, and it also made me realize that it has been too long since I have bathed on a river. I pushed that thought away.

I could feel my feet in the water, the strength of my body unmovable by the stream. And as transparent as the water was, the image of the round, colorful pebbles on the bottom and my own feet was blurred. Because that is what movement does, things do not initially seem as clear. The stream was moving along, cleansing me and leaving me all those wonderful sensations, but I was idle. And that was OK.

Sometimes we are the wind, sometimes, we let water run through us. And what is left is our essence. It is like we don’t change at all; at the same time, we are never the same.  I guess that is what being connected to our souls feels like. Our wisdom relies on learning when to let everything that does not belong to us go te leave, just like down with the s pieces of dead branches, and also when to keep our feet rooted. 

It could have been that it was too early or that my heart was broken open; who knows? The only certainty that I held afterward is that regardless of how delicious and clean the water feels, we need to let it run its course. 

“…and you will learn that there are thing like the river

that they are always leaving, but they are never gone.”

— Jose Angel Buesa "The Poem of Things"