Mystery

We’re surrounded every day with magic and miracles. Watching leaves and buds unfold their petals, shoots spearing their way through the earth, I am constantly reminded of the miracles of nature. This past week we had the most snow seen in this area for several decades and huge swathes of the countryside were without power or roads. Drifts were over eight feet high and metal pylons were smashed by the sheer weight of the snow and the crippling winds that accompanied it. The power of nature is never to be underestimated and always should be respected, yet we constantly forget in the humdrum repetitions of the life we create for ourselves. And I’m no different.

Every morning I have a routine that I observe in the quiet calm before my day begins. I write in my journal, read from an inspirational text, observe a meditation technique, read a chapter from a non- fiction text and finish off with some poems from a collection. Occasionally I include a chapter from the novel I’m reading, but I usually reserve that for nightime, before I go to sleep. My routine gets me grounded, sets me up for the day and keeps me in touch with elements of myself that get lost during the ping-pong of life. If that routine gets disrupted, because I’ve overslept or have to go out very early, I feel disonnected and have to find time in my day to sit still and just be. I’m obviously a person who needs stability and grounding, yet paradoxically one of the things I really love and appreciate is the unpredictability of each day, where anything can happen and all is possible.

At the front of my journal I have written from texts that inspire me and one of them is from Deepak Chopra’s Seven Spiritual Ways of Success.I have paraphrased his thoughts into Every day I will… followed by 23 statements like Practise acceptance or Step into the field of all possibilities. My favourite is Through the wisdom of uncertainty I find my security and I try to hold onto that when things are not going exactly to plan, when the electricity is cut off, arrangements are cancelled or illness comes knocking. It’s the mystery of life, then, that takes me and reminds me of the awesome power beyond my petty existence, the mystery that breathes us all into being and makes us much more than the sum of our parts.