“Notice the changing landscape as you travel: hills becoming valleys, forests becoming open fields, everything seamlessly part of the whole. Our lives are like that: unfolding, connected, complete.”
The inspiration for this statement, which I initially wrote for the Unity online radio Facebook page, came as I was returning from a weekend in New Orleans. Swamp and cypress groves gave way to pine forest which in turn was interspersed with meadow and grain field. Gentle hills replaced the flatness of the low country and towns and villages came and went. Yet, no matter how the landscape changed, everything naturally and seamlessly merged into everything else. There was no boundary, simply the flow of an organic whole.
The integrated and connected quality of the world around me was very restful and comforting. I, too, was a part of the landscape, and moving through it was a natural process even within a vehicle which appears to separate us from the natural world.
I appreciated that the connectedness and flow which I felt on that journey was like life itself. No matter how we tend to compartmentalize and divide our experience: young and old, summer and winter, the timelines of daily tasks; these divisions are actually arbitrary. Beyond the to do lists, the calendars and the divisions of work and play, today and tomorrow, life moves on in an endless flow.
As we spend more time focusing on that flow, and the natural order of unfoldment that is its hallmark, we find greater acceptance and peacefulness. Recognizing the completeness of each moment we unclench and begin to enjoy what is. There is no destination and no urgency to reach it. There is no nostalgia of farewell. There is the kind-hearted welcome of the now.
By a strange irony becoming aware of this unfolding wholeness allows me to accomplish daily tasks more effectively. Why? I guess because I am bringing a greater sense of myself to the activity. It’s a joy to live this way, and it is the natural world that is our greatest teacher.