#12

                                                                                                 Toni Frissel

Over Breakfast

When will you stop running?
From life, from pain, from conflict, from the past?

This morning (though you did try, and failed),
you are on the pavement,
walking,
walking away.
Away from that house
away from all that.
You can't breath or think.
There is only tightness in the solar plexus, chest and throat.
You're walking fast.
You think, perhaps, to slow down.
This helps.
Allot.

You are planning your exist strategy when you hear yourself:
When will you stop running?

There's allot of momentum behind it,
lifetimes, it seems, of running.
Running to, running from, running after, but mostly,
running away.
You can't quite imagine staying put.
You know you have courage,
but not for that.
The image is of
stepping
right into
the fire.
Can you do that?

Kev took you swimming the other day.
Waves splashed against waves,
sloshing here and there.
"Is it safe?" you asked.
Confused, then smiling and laughing a little.
"It's safe."
Waves rocked and swept and dipped and pushed.
You felt stressed.
Kev said, without knowing your distress,
"I like when the waves toss you about and
you don't know which way they will come from."
"You do?" you question, astonished.

Here's the teaching then. Again, the ocean teaches to let go. And more. To go with the flow.

Of course this was not your nature in the sea. You reached your toe, down to the rock below. Ah. Holding there. Hoping for stability. Holding on in one place. Good. For just a moment.  Only that. Until, sweeping grace, lifts and pulls back into somewhere more open. It doesn't work. But that doesn't stop you from trying, again.

This is also the teaching. Have some compassion for these habits.

But, today, I do try.  Something new. To be like my friend in the sea. I lift off from the rock, into the rocking waves. It lifts me up and away, but only so far. It's gentle. Very. And without resistance, you know, the stress is gone. It works. Better. Much. So much. I'm having fun. I look for my friend. He's out now. Maybe smiling at me. I don't want to get out of the water.

When will you stop running? 
Today,
I'll try, a little,
to stay. Because I'm not holding on
anymore
to the rock.

I have faith in the sea and myself and this breath. I have faith in the sangha, my friend on the beach, that keep teaching me to stay. Gently turning me toward the notion that everything I want is in this letting go and being with. Right here.

I walk back to the house.
I open the door
and go in.
I stay.

I'm not holding on anymore.
I'm letting go
and finding
a new way
to be in the sea.


Llora H. Kressmann