There is always a moment which is often quiet, subtle and almost invisible, when something inside us begins to whisper that we can’t keep moving at the pace we’ve been forcing ourselves to endure. Healing never begins in the noise or the chaos or the frantic pushing we do to stay upright. Healing begins the moment the psyche finally has permission to slow enough that the soul can be seen again. We don’t rush toward healing; we soften toward it. And most of the time, we only soften when life has worn us thin enough that we have no choice but to listen.
I felt that truth resonate deeply within when I was reading the Tao the other day, and there it was, right on page four — that line that stilled my soul: “If waters are placid, the moon will be mirrored perfectly. If we still ourselves, we can mirror the divine perfectly.” What a perfect image. I love it because it captures the exact way my own psyche works when life becomes too loud. When the waters inside me are agitated, when the external world storms through my emotional landscape, the sediment gets stirred up, rising and swirling until everything is murky. And in that murkiness and that inner turbulence, the soul becomes impossible to access. Not gone — never gone — but obscured beneath the flooding sediment that chaos stirs from the bottom.
You cannot see the soul clearly when the psyche is thrashing in all directions in much the same way you cannot hear your inner knowing when everything is stirred up and racing. It becomes muddy and confusing and impossible to engage the deeper part of yourself. And this is the part that moves me so much: the sediment doesn’t fall to the bottom just because we tell it to nor does clarity appear because we demand it. Stillness isn’t achieved through willpower. The mud settles on its own, organically and naturally, when the waters are no longer disturbed. When we stop shaking our interior world to mimic the external chaos that mirrors within. When we stop living out of sync with our own spirit.
This is why the book, “The Way of the Rose” speaks so deeply to the truth of healing. It teaches us that healing is available, not through striving, perfectionism or exertion, but through returning ourselves to the pace of life. And the pace of life is slow, gentle and steady. It is not hurried or pressured or frantically grasping at the next thing. The pace of life is the pace of breath, of waves, of seasons, of a human heart beating quietly at sixty beats a minute. That is the rhythm our bodies understand, that allows the psyche and soul to meet each other without interference.
When we live at the pace of life — no faster and no slower — the heartbeat becomes the first to tell us the truth. When we are congruent, when the psyche and soul are aligned, the heart rests easily. We feel nothing out of the ordinary in the chest. It is quiet, rhythmic, content. But the moment we begin to attach ourselves to the externalized pace of the world…..the frenetic, anxious, pressured pace……the body responds with absolute clarity. The clenching in the chest, the racing heartbeat, that sensation that your heart is beating outside of your body… that is what happens when the psyche moves faster than the soul can follow. Panic doesn’t lie because the heart never lies.
And despair tells the truth too. When the heart slows too far beneath the pace of life, in grief, collapse, loneliness, hopelessness, the chest feels heavy, almost as if a deep pressure is closing inward. It mimics the emotional truth perfectly: the system is shutting down. In both extremes, either the racing and the slowing, the body reveals the state of the psyche by becoming a mirror showing us where we have fallen out of rhythm with ourselves.
And this is where walking becomes such a profound spiritual practice. Walking is the pace of life embodied. Walking draws us back to ourselves, back to our breath, our body, the earth beneath us. “When in doubt, walk it out”. Walk until the heart steadies and the sediment begins to fall and settle again. Walk until the psyche remembers the rhythm it was designed for which is not exercise…..walking is medicine.
And so, the sediment metaphor continues to guide me. Sediment tells the story of our interior world. Sediment rises when we are overwhelmed or triggered, when old wounds get stirred, when the external world demands more than our spirit can carry. Sediment clouds everything when we are moving too fast for clarity to keep up. And sediment only settles when the waters become still and we slow, breathe and step out of the chaos and into the quiet. Not isolation — quiet.
Because solitude is not isolation. Solitude is a sacred return or the gateway back to the soul. Isolation collapses the psyche whereas solitude expands it. Isolation is fear while solitude is communion. Solitude is where the sediment falls to the bottom allowing the waters to clear. Solitude is where clarity returns and the soul becomes visible again shimmering beneath the surface like moonlight on a still lake.
And this is why healing begins in the quiet, not the rushing, the striving or the mental gymnastics we do to fix ourselves. Healing begins the moment the waters stop being disturbed. Healing begins the moment we fall back into rhythm with the pace of life. Healing begins when the psyche softens enough to let the soul rise.
This gentle, sacred, deeply human moment is where transformation begins. This is the heart of “Transforming Minds, Healing Hearts”. And, I am so grateful to walk with you, at the pace of life, as the waters clear.
There is always a moment which is often quiet, subtle and almost invisible, when something inside us begins to whisper that we can’t keep moving at the pace we’ve been forcing ourselves to endure. Healing never begins in the noise or the chaos or the frantic pushing we do to stay upright. Healing begins the moment the psyche finally has permission to slow enough that the soul can be seen again. We don’t rush toward healing; we soften toward it. And most of the time, we only soften when life has worn us thin enough that we have no choice but to listen.
I felt that truth resonate deeply within when I was reading the Tao the other day, and there it was, right on page four — that line that stilled my soul: “If waters are placid, the moon will be mirrored perfectly. If we still ourselves, we can mirror the divine perfectly.” What a perfect image. I love it because it captures the exact way my own psyche works when life becomes too loud. When the waters inside me are agitated, when the external world storms through my emotional landscape, the sediment gets stirred up, rising and swirling until everything is murky. And in that murkiness and that inner turbulence, the soul becomes impossible to access. Not gone — never gone — but obscured beneath the flooding sediment that chaos stirs from the bottom.
You cannot see the soul clearly when the psyche is thrashing in all directions in much the same way you cannot hear your inner knowing when everything is stirred up and racing. It becomes muddy and confusing and impossible to engage the deeper part of yourself. And this is the part that moves me so much: the sediment doesn’t fall to the bottom just because we tell it to nor does clarity appear because we demand it. Stillness isn’t achieved through willpower. The mud settles on its own, organically and naturally, when the waters are no longer disturbed. When we stop shaking our interior world to mimic the external chaos that mirrors within. When we stop living out of sync with our own spirit.
This is why the book, “The Way of the Rose” speaks so deeply to the truth of healing. It teaches us that healing is available, not through striving, perfectionism or exertion, but through returning ourselves to the pace of life. And the pace of life is slow, gentle and steady. It is not hurried or pressured or frantically grasping at the next thing. The pace of life is the pace of breath, of waves, of seasons, of a human heart beating quietly at sixty beats a minute. That is the rhythm our bodies understand, that allows the psyche and soul to meet each other without interference.
When we live at the pace of life — no faster and no slower — the heartbeat becomes the first to tell us the truth. When we are congruent, when the psyche and soul are aligned, the heart rests easily. We feel nothing out of the ordinary in the chest. It is quiet, rhythmic, content. But the moment we begin to attach ourselves to the externalized pace of the world…..the frenetic, anxious, pressured pace……the body responds with absolute clarity. The clenching in the chest, the racing heartbeat, that sensation that your heart is beating outside of your body… that is what happens when the psyche moves faster than the soul can follow. Panic doesn’t lie because the heart never lies.
And despair tells the truth too. When the heart slows too far beneath the pace of life, in grief, collapse, loneliness, hopelessness, the chest feels heavy, almost as if a deep pressure is closing inward. It mimics the emotional truth perfectly: the system is shutting down. In both extremes, either the racing and the slowing, the body reveals the state of the psyche by becoming a mirror showing us where we have fallen out of rhythm with ourselves.
And this is where walking becomes such a profound spiritual practice. Walking is the pace of life embodied. Walking draws us back to ourselves, back to our breath, our body, the earth beneath us. “When in doubt, walk it out”. Walk until the heart steadies and the sediment begins to fall and settle again. Walk until the psyche remembers the rhythm it was designed for which is not exercise…..walking is medicine.
And so, the sediment metaphor continues to guide me. Sediment tells the story of our interior world. Sediment rises when we are overwhelmed or triggered, when old wounds get stirred, when the external world demands more than our spirit can carry. Sediment clouds everything when we are moving too fast for clarity to keep up. And sediment only settles when the waters become still and we slow, breathe and step out of the chaos and into the quiet. Not isolation — quiet.
Because solitude is not isolation. Solitude is a sacred return or the gateway back to the soul. Isolation collapses the psyche whereas solitude expands it. Isolation is fear while solitude is communion. Solitude is where the sediment falls to the bottom allowing the waters to clear. Solitude is where clarity returns and the soul becomes visible again shimmering beneath the surface like moonlight on a still lake.
And this is why healing begins in the quiet, not the rushing, the striving or the mental gymnastics we do to fix ourselves. Healing begins the moment the waters stop being disturbed. Healing begins the moment we fall back into rhythm with the pace of life. Healing begins when the psyche softens enough to let the soul rise.
This gentle, sacred, deeply human moment is where transformation begins. This is the heart of “Transforming Minds, Healing Hearts”. And, I am so grateful to walk with you, at the pace of life, as the waters clear.
There is always a moment which is often quiet, subtle and almost invisible, when something inside us begins to whisper that we can’t keep moving at the pace we’ve been forcing ourselves to endure. Healing never begins in the noise or the chaos or the frantic pushing we do to stay upright. Healing begins the moment the psyche finally has permission to slow enough that the soul can be seen again. We don’t rush toward healing; we soften toward it. And most of the time, we only soften when life has worn us thin enough that we have no choice but to listen.
I felt that truth resonate deeply within when I was reading the Tao the other day, and there it was, right on page four — that line that stilled my soul: “If waters are placid, the moon will be mirrored perfectly. If we still ourselves, we can mirror the divine perfectly.” What a perfect image. I love it because it captures the exact way my own psyche works when life becomes too loud. When the waters inside me are agitated, when the external world storms through my emotional landscape, the sediment gets stirred up, rising and swirling until everything is murky. And in that murkiness and that inner turbulence, the soul becomes impossible to access. Not gone — never gone — but obscured beneath the flooding sediment that chaos stirs from the bottom.
You cannot see the soul clearly when the psyche is thrashing in all directions in much the same way you cannot hear your inner knowing when everything is stirred up and racing. It becomes muddy and confusing and impossible to engage the deeper part of yourself. And this is the part that moves me so much: the sediment doesn’t fall to the bottom just because we tell it to nor does clarity appear because we demand it. Stillness isn’t achieved through willpower. The mud settles on its own, organically and naturally, when the waters are no longer disturbed. When we stop shaking our interior world to mimic the external chaos that mirrors within. When we stop living out of sync with our own spirit.
This is why the book, “The Way of the Rose” speaks so deeply to the truth of healing. It teaches us that healing is available, not through striving, perfectionism or exertion, but through returning ourselves to the pace of life. And the pace of life is slow, gentle and steady. It is not hurried or pressured or frantically grasping at the next thing. The pace of life is the pace of breath, of waves, of seasons, of a human heart beating quietly at sixty beats a minute. That is the rhythm our bodies understand, that allows the psyche and soul to meet each other without interference.
When we live at the pace of life — no faster and no slower — the heartbeat becomes the first to tell us the truth. When we are congruent, when the psyche and soul are aligned, the heart rests easily. We feel nothing out of the ordinary in the chest. It is quiet, rhythmic, content. But the moment we begin to attach ourselves to the externalized pace of the world…..the frenetic, anxious, pressured pace……the body responds with absolute clarity. The clenching in the chest, the racing heartbeat, that sensation that your heart is beating outside of your body… that is what happens when the psyche moves faster than the soul can follow. Panic doesn’t lie because the heart never lies.
And despair tells the truth too. When the heart slows too far beneath the pace of life, in grief, collapse, loneliness, hopelessness, the chest feels heavy, almost as if a deep pressure is closing inward. It mimics the emotional truth perfectly: the system is shutting down. In both extremes, either the racing and the slowing, the body reveals the state of the psyche by becoming a mirror showing us where we have fallen out of rhythm with ourselves.
And this is where walking becomes such a profound spiritual practice. Walking is the pace of life embodied. Walking draws us back to ourselves, back to our breath, our body, the earth beneath us. “When in doubt, walk it out”. Walk until the heart steadies and the sediment begins to fall and settle again. Walk until the psyche remembers the rhythm it was designed for which is not exercise…..walking is medicine.
And so, the sediment metaphor continues to guide me. Sediment tells the story of our interior world. Sediment rises when we are overwhelmed or triggered, when old wounds get stirred, when the external world demands more than our spirit can carry. Sediment clouds everything when we are moving too fast for clarity to keep up. And sediment only settles when the waters become still and we slow, breathe and step out of the chaos and into the quiet. Not isolation — quiet.
Because solitude is not isolation. Solitude is a sacred return or the gateway back to the soul. Isolation collapses the psyche whereas solitude expands it. Isolation is fear while solitude is communion. Solitude is where the sediment falls to the bottom allowing the waters to clear. Solitude is where clarity returns and the soul becomes visible again shimmering beneath the surface like moonlight on a still lake.
And this is why healing begins in the quiet, not the rushing, the striving or the mental gymnastics we do to fix ourselves. Healing begins the moment the waters stop being disturbed. Healing begins the moment we fall back into rhythm with the pace of life. Healing begins when the psyche softens enough to let the soul rise.
This gentle, sacred, deeply human moment is where transformation begins. This is the heart of “Transforming Minds, Healing Hearts”. And, I am so grateful to walk with you, at the pace of life, as the waters clear.
Written by : admin
