Moment-to-moment...the gift of travel

She lives constantly on a border. On the thin line held tautly between the past and the future, and it moves at breakneck speeds that can dizzies her head sometimes, especially when she holding too tightly.

This flowing solid boundary of her lives is ephemeral.  In one moment She gazes into the mesmerizing  eyes of a stranger, imagining him as her life-long lover, and in the next her hand is slowly pulled from his as the Tsungtow drives away from the pier, he on his way to the next island and never to be seen again.  In one moment she's seated on her mediation cushion over a reflecting pool complete with waterfall and koi fish, vowing to always pay this much attention to detail, and in the next she's on an plane over Japan gulping down microwaved food and zoning out to some badly made movie.

It's during times of travel that this boundary is revealed so clearly to her, as the repetition of her daily life melts away.  She is so focused on what is clearly temporary that she becomes more present to it. 

In her daily life, her friends can sometimes feel her pull away slightly with her mind, caught in memories or future dreams.  What they don't know is that sometimes she's simple trapped in the cycle of repetitive compulsive thoughts on subjects that have occupied her since she was a little girl.  The mind STILL believing it can figure it out if it simple chews harder. She had felt it too with her mother, knowing she wasn't there but not knowing how to pull her back and connect with her. So she tried to go there too.  Now it was habit whenever she felt uncomfortable...or when she went unconscious.

When her life force would ebb, due to the wrong foods, bad habits or lack of practice, she was lulled into thinking "this is how it will always be", and so didn't feel like she missed much when she drifted away. 

That is where she has been mistaken. It is how she was missing her life, or as her dad has said since time began, why "life happens to us as we are making other plans."

But now, here, in the beauty and softness of Siam, she gets the message that she had planted in her subconscious over 5 years ago.  To wake up again, she needed to start "consciously continuously showing up...moment-to-moment."

The universe had been sending her this message through Rainbow Heart, the American Peruvian Shaman, for many weeks before she left. "Love is about be firecly present," she would say. But the words had stayed somewhat remote, even as she practiced accepting and appreciating. In the subtle folds, love had become a strategy for getting what she wanted.  Now it was blossoming in her heart as a way of being, simply because it made more sense.

So she began  to surf the wave of Now.

Recognizing that the fast moving ephemeral place may be short but it is immensely wide.  It contains and endless array of potentials and possibilities. When she fully showed up on that line, magick happened. She would put lotus flowers on her breakfast plate even when she ate alone, She would find the kung fu in shoveling snow, and she would create random acts of beauty and senseless acts of kindness.  It's where she found peace amidst all the shades and shapes, moods and situations.

 "Be here now" was more than a trendy concept that elevated her ideas of knowing.  It was the way of life.  To love life...to live a life she loved...she simply had to show up.

And as she relaxed she breathed in now.  Finally noticing the cranes as they flew over the rice paddies of Siam.