A Drop in the River

I awaken early, and the river calls - it draws me strongly - even before my meditation cushion does. So I follow its urgent beckoning, and arrive at a river that is still, and quiet, and empty, with these words of Rumi, skipping in my heart:

"You are not just a drop in the ocean,
You are the mighty ocean in the drop."

But these are the words that my heart hears instead:

"You are not just a drop in this river,
You are this mighty river in the drop."

Can it be true? Am I really this body of water in the drop? I know this is what Yogananda so often teaches in his writings. It is a lesson I have been struggling to learn and embody...

I paddle away from the launch area and travel up the center of the river - something I rarely do. Perhaps it is a message for me to seek greater balance in my life. This seems to be a kind of perennial message for me. Yet this paddling upstream in the center is also symbolic of uniting two halves of my life...

It is warm - with a shot of cool air here and there - and it is somewhat breezy, as I watch a heron or two fly around and listen to hidden birds sing their vibrant songs with joyous abandon, wondering if my heart will ever like that someday?

I review both the insights given in a dream last night - and the lessons learned, and un-learned - and re-learned these last couple of years as I find myself once again in transition - in the place of stillness and discomfort between another ending and beginning.

I poignantly note and observe the new sprouts of what is becoming and what will be in my life, that are slowly emerging and taking root. Once more, new opportunities come unexpectedly because of the groundwork that has been done. Still, for someone who does not like change, it is once more somewhat unsettling. Yet I reflect on insights shared by two friends of late, who noted that I am nowhere near where I was when I began this journey...

I come home and sit - my restlessness deposited and left behind in the river. I sit for an hour and half - urged to stay - and wanting to do so - knowing that this interior journey is taking me deeper - it is calling, nourishing, leading...

My heart prays: "Be with me, and show me the way...Make the signs clear..."

It is almost mid-day by the time I finish - my soul fed - and now my heart is touched by a garland of inspirational quotes my Twitter friends have left for me. I read them, and sigh deeply...

This first quote by "Mythic River" is precisely the right message for me in this moment:

"Separation is an illusion.
We are individual expressions
of the One."

Then I slowly sip a second cup of coffee and enjoy these wonderful gems as well!

"In the garden
the door is always open
to the holy."
- May Sarton

"Anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you."
- David Whyte

"I think that if ever a mortal
heard the Voice of God
it would be in a garden
at the cool of the day."
- F. Frankfort Moore

"Nobody has ever measured,
not even poets,
how much the heart can hold."
- Zelda Fitzgerald

"Contain all human faces
in your own
without any judgment of them."
- Rumi

"In the house of love,
the floor dances,
the walls are made of song,
and the music never stops."
- Rumi

"Fling me across the seas of space,
fling me across the fabric of time.
Make nothing and from nothing -
everything."
- Rumi

"Infinite gratitude towards all things past.
Infinite service to all things present.
Infinite responsibility to all things future."
- Huston Smith

"Always receive with grace."
- Scott Blum