#flowwithlife • Tenneson Woolf

It’s a common theme for me. Seeking flow. Seeking relationship with flow. Seeking surrender. Seeking contribution. There’s a certain feeling that goes with it, I notice. And joy. And sometimes, the kind of “oh dear” that comes with even a half-raised eyelid of awakeness that knows things are about to change. It’s a common theme for many of us.

With that in mind, I found a few words writing me this morning. For inspiration.

Can’t Not?

In this life
I seek flow.
It is flow
with life itself.

Flow with life as river
that ineffably
finds its way to sea or sky
because it can’t not.

Flow with life as fire
that flickers or bursts
its way upward
because it can’t not.

Flow with life that is growth in spring
that persists through
rock, dirt, field, and even paved parking lot
because it can’t not.

I wonder if there is a flow
that perhaps takes decades,
and perhaps enough challenging circumstance,
to reach the point at which it can’t not be surrendered to?

That’s funny, right.
Because death will come
just as surely as birth,
when again, flow, simply, can’t not.

Yup, I suppose it is true that the moment one seeks emptiness, one misses it. I suppose it is true that it isn’t to be sought. Rather, emptiness is to be encountered, like this layered waterfall (near Sundance, UT from a recent hike) revealed after turn in the hiking path, visual caught up with sounds that began several trail bends before.

And then, perhaps, also, this emptiness is a practice, to cultivate. There is a todo in it. Emptiness a feeling to lead with, that life itself celebrates and can arrive within. What if…, nothing were known? What if there were only the space of listening life into being so as to be with it for a moment? What if that were what we cultivated more of?

This kind of emptiness, encountered or cultivated or both, is deep hunger in me. And deep hunch. And has everything to do with self. And team. And community.

Yesterday, before boarding a plane, I typed with thumbs an essence of this for me. It’s a desire. A freedom that changes freedom. For me. Others might have a different version or a different need to pursue that aligns with their gifts.

Yet this emptiness, is one that is in me, that centers it all.

There is nothing, but emptiness.
I seek this.

In that is found
flow with life itself.

In that is
everything.

The rest
are just ways
to draw us near.

Tag: #flowwithlife

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