Yesterday I took a walk through the San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary not far from home. The intentional journey circled around several large ponds and meandered and spiraled through paths lined thick and dense so only what was immediately ahead could be seen because of the constant turns creating blind paths.

This calls forth insight that stems from inner illumination where no more than what is necessary to see in the immediate path is possible or needed – something challenging to embrace when all we want is answers and yet this desire for answers stems from a state of suffering we have decided on some level to allow.

It’s hard to realize that we do not need to know anything but what is before us in this miraculous moment, which we take for granted due to the inability to release ourselves from the bondage of spiraling suffering we have been uncomfortably accustomed to live with, and conditioned in many ways to accept. In some cases, unconsciously perpetuating this for reasons beyond the human emotion’s comprehension. And yet there is an ironic symbiosis to the seeming and frustrating madness.

This called to mind how we are to embrace each step and moment without expectation or attachment, but simply the trust that is imbued with unseen and undefined promise that can take flight at any moment we recognize that our wings were never irreparably broken – they were simply unrealized.

It was a chilly, gray, and somber day that called for silence and an inner stillness that heralded today’s Winter Solstice. Even the birds at the sanctuary were quiet and quite still. They too seemed to embrace the inner world, welcoming the potency of this illuminating darkness.

Life and Winter can seem stark, firm, and cruel. And yet, somehow Nature does it with such grace.

What does She know that we have forgotten? What does She reflect that we are unable to see?

Perhaps our “need” to see something more than the astoundingly crazy beautiful miracle of this very moment, no matter how it appears and feels, is our own created prison. Perhaps our defining beliefs, both personally and collectively accepted, limit our ability to understand the sacred creation at hand. And yes, perhaps our emotional attachments, while so enrapturing, have also placed boundaries on our limitless expansion when they don’t meet desired expectations.

Maybe renewal is already within this very moment…the moment the unconditional light of understanding and inner illumination is lovingly and gently ignited by our true openness to its presence, here and now, accessed within and by our innately powerful selves.

We are encouraged every day by everything around us to understand these simple truths and to embody them as naturally as All That Is around us does.

Nature and the nature within each of us constantly demonstrates, reflects, and communicates what people seek in answer. 

It is BOTH in the light and the dark, neither or either, and in them, but not of them – simultaneously.

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. ~Mahatma Gandhi 

In stillness the world is restored. ~Lao Tzu