Stillness in Motion : Walking Meditation
I began the day walking in the forest, I got myself intentionally lost, off the path, letting go, made a new path through thick blueberry bushes. Hot sticky humid morning.
I emerged from the major detour into a field packed with wild flowers, yellow, pink, purple, daisies, buttercups, dandelions, clover and campions.
A field of flowers, a field of vision, filled with flowers.
Delighted, but disorientated I forgot to find my way and revelled in the field itself.
I had made a detour in order to avoid cows on the path of my usual walk.
I walked for an hour to avoid a threat and the field I emerge into was at the top of the path I avoided.
The entrance to the wood that marked part of my normal ‘safe’ regular walk was a padlocked gate, no choice but to walk down to the path I had avoided.
As I turned the corner I realised the threat had gone, moved on, oblivious to me and my timeline.
I made my way home.
Last week a similar story, avoiding bulls (with horns) on a path, circumnavigating fences, trespassing across boundaries, adrenaline, a thought that by avoiding the ‘known’ threat the longer unknown potential could be worse. “Little did they know” I began.
We had already hiked three hours up a mountain, journeyed through ‘Devils Gorge’ and as we made our detour up a steep field next to a fence my mind interpreted events in a heroic journey genre. The day had already felt like a scene out of Lord of the Rings and as we crossed fences, came up against the false farm boundaries I thought of the trials characters like that faced, elevating and exaggerating my experience.
We were attacked by huge wood ants, running away into thick deep bogs and finally emerging into a field of wild yellow peonies - The Hobbit, Never Ending Story, Wizard of Oz
An epic journey to avoid a threat becomes a loop back to the face of the threat.
Stillness in Motion, orbiting around that which should be faced, dealt with, head on.
Moving but not advancing - No not true - the detours also hold beauty, adventure, excitement, experience, life.
But this other timeline is a still point waiting for me to come and face it.
The cells in our body, the molecules in a table, everything is fluid, changeable, moving on its own timeline.
Time is relative for objects, people, planets, space, the moon, stars, you me. the changes we through in our life, all the emotion, motion, turmoil, tragedy, loss, love, life.
