River
Meditation
“No man
steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river, and he's
not the same man.”
Heraclitus
This is one of my all-time favorite quotes. Everyone knows it, and the more we work with
it, the deeper it gets. Anyone who's spent time near a river knows
the truth of it. Rivers rise and fall, they run swift and slow, they
dry up in the heat and overflow with rain, they gather whatever they
pass and deposit it along the way. Some days they are green,
sometimes muddy brown, sometimes clear as the sky. When rivers flood,
they cut new shoreline, they deposit islands, they create new habitat
for birds and hiding places for schools of baby fish. Rivers are
moody, and being near them affects your own mood. Sometimes calm and
beautiful, sometimes dark and dangerous, sometimes sunny, sparkling
with light. They can be languorous and feminine one day, and
stampeding like chariots of war the next. Always, change is the
constant.
We humans are rivers of a
sort. For one thing, we're mostly water. Our heart and brain are 73%
water, lungs 83%, and our total body is 60% water (Journal of
Biological Chemistry 158). We are animals who carry our river inside
and that river changes just as constantly as the one running through
your town. Our brilliant bodies adjust the chemistry just so, to suit
whatever changes are going on. When it cannot make those adjustments,
we become moody and difficult. We ebb, we feel overwhelmed
or dry as dust. When we are in balance, we are sunny and light, just
like a river on a beautiful day. When we think deeply about things,
when we experience events that cause us to adjust our world view, we
are recreating ourselves, redrawing our boundaries, just like a river
at flood stage. When we resist, we become calcified and rigid; we
sink and become like rock in the river bottom, no longer able to move
and flow. Change is necessary to life.
The river will always
change, but it will remain a river. The same is true for you. Go with
the flow today. Don't fight the current. Let the river of life take
you where it will.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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