when feeling stuck

a mediation that popped up at just the right time last week from the book of awakening by mark nepo (i've told you about this - it means a lot to me - get it), and it resonated so deeply i feel compelled to share it.  for me, it speaks to my issues with passing judgment, handling competition and letting myself get caught up in negativity.  if you're part of this wide world of internets, i imagine you experience similar shortcomings.

when feeling stuck

the same stream of life
that runs through the world
runs through my veins.
––rabindranath tagore

we are so achievement-oriented that we often surge right by the true value of relating to what's before us, because we think that accomplishing things will complete us, when it is experiencing life that will.

yet, if we can outlast the urge to judge everything we encounter, a miracle starts to surround us in which painting, music, poetry, running water, flowers, wind through trees, opens vistas––all touch and draw out their counterpart that lives quietly within us.

the ninenteenth-century poet gerard manley hopkins called this inner terrain "inscape".  and just as no landscape can flourish without sun and water, our inscape must be irrigated and drenched with many forms of life if we are to thrive.

so, when feeling stuck or disconnected from the miracle of life, as will happen to all of us, try to listen, see, feel, and just take in.  try to let the energies of life stir their counterparts within you.

in order to be whole, suspend your criticism.  for life is not a matter of taste, but of awakening, not a matter of finding things pleasing or disturbing, but of finding things completing, not a matter of liking or disliking, but of opening the geography of one's soul.