Those of you who remember the bouncy doo-wop song, Summertime Summertime Sum Sum Summertime by the Jamies, may also remember simpler times. Life in today’s world is vastly more complex than those Leave it to Beaver days, yet the heart of life remains simple. Learning to open and stay in your heart is the foundation of these creatively transformative times.
The great discipline of transformation is to live at the intersection where life is simultaneously arising and passing away. We seem to live our best at a crossroads where we don’t cling to the old or push away what is new. Most of us have experience demonstrating that this isn’t always easy. However, in this space where things come into existence, life moves freely and creatively. So do we.
A time comes for all of us when we realize we don’t push the course of life’s river through mental effort. We build our capacity to stand deep in the river. We learn to meet its currents and reflections. Its living waters cleanse us. This summer, standing deep in the river means steadfast commitment to heart and soul impulses that bring us alive. Beyond habitual living, life points us to our heart and body again and again, where empathy, attunement and kindness are kindred spirits with the mysteries of change.
Being in the river of life without feeling besieged, we are called to make our way humbly and halt the mental race to get what we think is missing. We are encouraged into courageous conversation with our self and to reestablish connection with our heart. In this fuller relationship we can embrace the privilege and responsibility of being truly alive.
Maturity helps us realize that vivid aliveness is discovered through open vulnerability where we risk our self at creative frontiers of light and dark. In this crucible of change, we learn to turn from relying on our exhausted will and a need for outside stimulus, to wholeheartedly meet what arises inside us, however circumstances appear to be.
The invitation is to become tidal and breathe with life’s ebb and flow, being a participant and a witness at the same time. We are called to slow down in the swirl of life, kindly attend emerging waves of evolution, perhaps touch an epicenter of pain and a ground of beauty simultaneously, where we are not falsely soothed but held. Always held. Being in this ongoing intimate relationship with our self we become emancipated in our birthright of freedom. This is the covenant of these times.
Staying connected in revelatory conversation with our interior emerging potential is to come close in to our heart, to be wholehearted, listen deeply, feel what we feel, and know the warmth of compassion. Here, we co-exist in a grounded, aware, creative intersection between past and future that includes the heart of everything. Here, our embodied skills, experience, soul and voice can actualize in resounding expressions of new life.
