I do so love these words of a centering meditation:

flower fresh

mountain strong

reflecting water calm

Innocent and open, strong and resilient, peaceful and walking in beauty, this is a beautiful place to restore myself to.  I though about this one morning as I looked out my window and watched the wild wind whip through a tree.  I thought of the turbulence in my life.  My eyes scanned from the frantic leaves down to the trunk of the tree that stood strong and motionless amid the fury.  I thought that I want to be strong in the wind like the trunk, but yet I do not want to be stagnant and not move.  But then, I thought, what if the stillness, the turbulence, the flying free, the sitting still, was all I could see because it was all that I was accustomed to see.  What if I was the mountain, towering above the sky, roots deep into the earth, but all that my eyes would see is the surface of the mountain; the trees, the sunshine, the wind, the snow?  What if most of my days until now were spend roaming around the surface and never in exploring the depths of all that I was?  So in my silence, I entered the mountain.

I began my journey within the vision I knew.  I saw the trees, the snow, the squirrels that scurry along the branches.  I started beside a tree top and slowly descended, I felt the gentle breeze and the suns rays shining between the branches.  Down, down, to the base of the tree where the rocks met the snow and the pine needles on the surface.  I then submerged below the ground into darkness. With the cold and dark, anxiety pumped through my veins, I could hear my heart beat in my ears. I breathe deep to accept and not judge.  I am somewhere between me and what other’s perceive to be me.  Oh God, did I really give so many people this much power over me?  I cannot feel where one begins and the other ends.  Like a storm in my consciousness with interlaced stratified clouds of screams of desperation and silent knowing, I feel them moving in and out of me, out of what I think is me.  I continue to descend.

Lower, down.  I think I hear, drops of water sliding between layers of rock.  I know I have passed beneath the surface of the earth.  The drops slow as they cool, and then harden into ice.  Ice that threatens to split the rock.   But I am the rock, I quiet myself, I accept.  I stiffen, freeze and split.  The pain is so excruciating as layers break away.  I fear I am losing all myself.  Is this what death is?  When will it end?  I shutter, I shake and then I am still. I am lighter, but I am more expansive.  I am still existing, but all of what I thought was me is no longer in my perception.  My thoughts seem to echo in my head as if my own voice is calling me from all the directions around me.  I descend further into the music, ringing through crystalline caverns.  The deeper I go, the more I sense that so many crystals were really one.

Lower, down. I think I see the warm glow of the heart of the earth, where all matter is dissolved into one.  Effortlessly, I melt.  I am a sea of warm ambrosia, glowing, flowing, knowing.  I am nothing, but I am everything.  Every once in a while this truth will explode to the surface, where I had seemed to live so much of my life.  But here, deep inside of me, is all there is.  No matter where I run or where I seek, there I am, there I always was.  My heart is home in the core, love lives in the heart, this is where I belong, this is who I am.  There is no “I,” there is only all.

I open my eyes.  I observe again the surface of the mountain.  But I am not there.

Smile.

Flower fresh.