To my generation these words might revive memories of the Allman Brothers Band, way back in 1975. To me today it simply expresses how I am feeling right now.
I am seeing a journey snaking ahead of me, twisting and turning into a distance long out of sight. I have not walked this path before, and fear is trying to push its way into my experience. If I am not conscious, if I am not aware, I will succumb to the fear, and my journey will not be a pleasant one.
We cannot stop the endless march of perceived time. It seems we are always moving away from something and towards something else, but of course, as those who have read my words before will know, this is not my understanding of reality. We live in a forever 'now', and so there really is no need to feel loss, abandonment or fear. For they are all things of a past that doesn't exist except as a memory, and a future we simply fabricate out of the fragments of our life experience. In a sense, nothing is real.
But I am feeling loss. I am feeling abandoned! All this in spite of the awareness I have, which also tells me that what I am grieving hasn't actually gone anywhere. I am imagining and thinking loss. I am making it up. It isn't real. But none-the-less I feel it.
Just now I sat in the garden feeling very sorry for myself. Some things are happening in my life, and I don't want them to. That's it.. It's not that it's so bad, it's just not what I would like. While I sat bringing myself into the present moment, I had a vivid memory. This often happens when something wants to move and we give it the space to do so.
Suddenly I was a small child at a train station. My brother was leaving to go to boarding school. My mother stood beside me - she was tightly holding my hand. I loved my brother, and I didn't want him to go. He didn't want to go. My Mother didn't want him to go. The three of us pretended it was okay. The train pulled out, we waved, and when the smoke had cleared we turned and walked away. No tears, no talk - just walk. I was numb.
When people go, so do I... I go numb. I can't speak, I can't think, I just check out. I did it again today - only the difference was I knew I was doing it. Awareness is wonderful. It is like you look at yourself with kindness, and see the truth of what is happening. It is feeling what you need to feel without resistance, and at the same time allowing something so much greater than we know to come swooping in to fill the space. As fear, loss, anger or regret or even numbness is felt and released from deep within, so universal love - the energy that is always travelling towards us - comes in. Just know it will, and so it does.
As I sat and felt my pain, I 'asked' for love to come in and fill the gap. In that moment, out of the hedge behind me, a blackbird swooped out, his wings gently touched my head as he went by and he landed on the fence a few feet away. He looked at me for a precious moment with his inky black eye, and flew straight across my head again and back into the hedge. He disappeared from sight. Coincidence? I don't think so. All is Well.