in the mist

"Dogen, a great Zen master, said, "If you walk in the mist, you get wet." So just listen, read and write. Little by little, you will come closer to what you need to say and express it through your voice.

Be patient and don't worry about it. Just sing and write in tune."

~ an excerpt from Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

I read these words several weeks ago, and they have stayed in my mind ever since, initiating a relationship between my life and the picture they paint. It went beyond inspiration for my writing practice and soaked it's mystery into my own interpretation of what it means to get intimate with my own life...to walk in the mist and get wet from being there with my entire self.

I've gone forward through the past month really listening and practicing and writing out words. I have cut myself off from certain connections and I have been drawn closer to others. I have been observing and living...and trying so very honestly to find truth. I am meeting inspiration along the way, I am finding the depth of my courage each time I choose to accept a new challenge and I am doing my best to live out a practice of kindness, of thoughtfulness of consciousness and love.

I slip and stumble, I move forward and drift back...I dance in sideways motion and sometimes I even think that I fly. I begin to feel so comfortable in my skin, my surrounding, my situations, my life and there are faint tinges of the sadness and uncertainty that may always exist in my soul...but that keep me real and soft...wanting and curious...exploratory and open. I treasure those parts of my self. The ones that ache and show me truth. The ones that keep life a question with no real answers. The ones that guide me further down this road of doing the best with what I have and being gentle with all the rest.

I've caught flying thoughts escaping from my mind when meeting inspiration among my days. Thoughts that take note and try and record the moments through words to be later scribbled across journal pages or typed into a blog post.

But they have carried on further to the inscriptions set apart from any record of existence...deep into the heart of my being and away from any attachment of having to "know" what they were all about.

It all adds up to knowing that I am everything I am and everything I am not...and that the joy is in the discovery of what that all means for me.

I feel very comfortable...

and continuous,

and loved.

And that is a really beautiful place for me to be.

In the mist,

where I am wet with living.