And Then Comes Spring!

Ahhh! You wake up one morning and feel it in your bones. Warmth has returned to the earth. The birds are swooping and your energy rises. The same feeling is felt following a mean depression, great or small. You wake up one day and know that this is a new day. The past is behind you. The endless winter, ended. Possibilities appear on your radar. Beach trips, road-trips, festivals, picnics stretching late into the evening, maybe sleeping under the stars. Moving your body! Drinking juice. Red wine is switched to white or rose, with strangely little remorse. Spring is about Joy. The simple birth-right of feeling pleasure while you’re alive. Yet if we stay in our heads and get bogged down in responsibility or fearful stories, we miss it. Summer, as a metaphor, is about Service, according to Alexander Shaia.

I have spent far too many metaphorical and literal Spring Times worrying about what I maybe should be doing that I have all but forgotten my heart's desires. Heart is not so serious. Heart is all about creativity and free-flowing play. Loving connection. Beauty and awe and yummmmm! Spirituality can take a break too, because to be honest, it doesn’t exist. Even beyond institutional religion, spirituality, once freeing, can become a mind trap. Spirituality does not stand alone, apart from creation / physical manifestation, apart from the body, from health. To dwell too long in what people call ‘spiritual matters’ of the mind is to miss the beauty of Presence. Lucky for us, Presence doesn’t need our attention at every moment to keep it in sparkling, brilliant existence. The magic of life is always an under current, flowing through our story, whether we take moments of recognition or simply miss it. So what I’m suggesting is that we stop talking about the Divine for a while. If that feels relaxing or exciting to you. Instead, go out and live a creative life of Joy, imbibing presence by taking 2-5 seconds (whenever you think of it) to stop the mind and simply drop in to the spectacular Presence of Life. To me, that sounds like a Spring well lived, and excellent preparation for the coming Summer of natural, heart-felt sharing and service.

I’m going surfing. (Time to buy a surfboard!)

Daniel is a wanderer. Sometimes globally, always internally. His wandering has lead him to two questions - what are the obstacles to the flow of love and how can we transcend them? Daniel is a yoga teacher, a love healer and one who thinks too deeply. He is the one who puts the pen to the paper. See all previous articles by Daniel Strelan