Still

Many times over the years when I have sat down to write my book, I have instead ended up walking away. The weight of guilt and unworthiness I have experienced has felt impossible.  For several years, I was not aware that this was what was actually happening to me. What I was aware of – what I intuited for many years – was that something of beauty and power wanted to be written through me. But I had already judged myself as unworthy of both receiving and expressing that something.

One day as I sat before the computer, the thought came: How could I possibly write this book? I have done so many terrible things. Hurt so many people. How dare I write this book?  I have no right.

This time, I didn’t turn off the computer and walk away. This time, I left the computer on, walked towards the rug on the floor and lay down. As I began breathing in and out, gently and rhythmically, I felt into remembrance. I remembered and re-membered.

I am all of it and I am none of it. This body can receive it all, hold it all, breathe through it all.

Lying there on the rug, looking up towards the ceiling, all of it became present and huge: neither a stormy cloud nor an orb of light, though just as full as both. It all existed here. Yes…I have done it all, been it all, felt it all, known it all. The breath flowed easily for a moment – and then it stopped. A flash of panic, How can I possibly live with this?… Something deeper then moved into the foreground of my awareness…a feeling-presence I have become familiar with over the years: it has the quality of an almighty mountain – unshaken and unchanged, even as the world around it roars, trembles and forgets.

Time passed. If there had been words to accompany what I experienced, I imagine they may have been:  And still there is Love.

At some point, I rose up from the floor. There was a sense of completion and of peaceful, clear emptiness. I noticed this body walking over to the computer desk, as if it had a mind entirely of its own. There was a book waiting to be written.

And still there is Love.

(‘Still’ was written in 2020)