The Gift of Losing Our Way
Sep 18, 2015I love it when a classic country western song speaks simple sage wisdom.
Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks once intoned the poignant question,
“Baby, how can I miss you if you won’t go away?”
The same can be asked of our own sense of peace, stability and clarity.
Cultivating inner peace and stability takes patience and perseverance and once we taste it’s sweet balm, it can be really hard to see it slip away.
But this slipping in and out of awareness is a natural and even beneficial aspect of an awakening life.
We accept that the tides rise and fall.
We recognize the need for seasons to come and go.
We know that every gardenia that blooms, will soon fade, only to bloom again. And when it does, we get to re-experience our love of gardenias at least one more precious time.
What a gift.
With each ebb and flow, death and birth, wither and bloom, coming and going – this repeated reacquaintance with peace roots it deeper within us.
The benefits of cultivated awareness and presence become more clear and tangible every time they return from our forgetful state of being.
That which we practice, willingly or not, becomes stronger.
The day that my gardenias finally come into bloom after weeks of watching the buds patiently develop is a really, really good day. If they were always in bloom, I might just forget to notice.
I like to imagine that Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks may have discovered that with practice we learn how to appreciate our beloved anew again and again and again without them ever having to leave the room.
But when love does go, we can loosen our grip, knowing that its return will be all the more sweet the next time around.
Knowing that because we are now standing with an open hand, we will be all the more ready to receive it when it does.