Inner Here-ness

It’s funny, I sit here on my yoga mat in an Airbnb apartment ready to do the thing that brings ‘inner peace’

Yet the mind is lost, swirling in all directions of what if’s.

I always get myself in a rather messy pickle with this dilemma.

You see there’s this voice in my head, programmed from society or my mother, or my father, or both. And it says ‘if you mediate, sit, sow, create what is it bringing you? Oh get up and DO something’ A sickness of our fast paced society I believe.

When I listen to this voice, it brings me to a place that I can ultimately do nothing but sit, staring at the ceiling in a ball of stress, despair, and total anxiety for the world unravelling around me.

Truthfully I am grateful to have found this platform online a few days ago, grateful that this question has been asked.

Because it is not only growing into a life line and also a cultivation for ‘inner peace’.

The question has brought me back to the questions of such importance.

What can I do now that will not only allow me to be more here now, but is also something that my future self will thank me for?

For a long time in my teen years I didn’t believe I suffered from anxiety, depressions, vastly intense mood changes and well… fear. I was taught like so many, these things were just how life was.

And contemplating now I’m not sure if me labelling myself helped or not.

Either way these selves are a part of me. And we dance in and out of contact with each other often.

In this moment as I type these words and allow the very sound of the key board to hit strings of calm in my heart and pull me back out from the underwater scene that plagues me.

The underwater scene that fears being out on the street, that fears all the what if’s of what’s to come ‘if’ no money arrives.

This underwater scene, like most humans encounter often upon this earth is something that changes us. Changes the very core of us.

Because we start to realise what things are actually important, and all the stresses of other people, events, humanly things become so much less important.

As these words pour from me it’s here that ‘threading the needle’ is real.

And even though my life is in shambles, I can feel slowly the trust in life weave and sow itself back to my heart.

Repairing the breaks in it and reminding me ‘hey, it’s going to be okay’

For me I feel that’s what inner peace truly is.

It’s the finding of a place within us that says ‘hey, I’ve got you, you’re here, I am here, here we are’

And that’s it.

There’s no other worry or thing to think about. And for the first time we shift ourselves into a magic that is ‘truly living’.

For it’s from this place, we don’t live from the mind any longer. We live from the heart. A sacred place of union with eternity.

Even just one moment in this cosmic jewel in our days and life can become transformed, not because we have more energy or more clarity(although that is most definitely that case) Because we trust it. Faith resides in our bones and we trust what’s needed.

Living life from this seat is such a vastly different view to the latter.

Of DO to Achieve and rush to make it and your worth and value is in what you do and what you have.

It’s now 8:30am here on my mat.

There a subtle breeze through the window, birdsong dancing outside, the soft and steady ticking of an old wall clock.

Flowers in a vase on their steady decent into death and their beloved return with mother earth.

The heart pounding that was in my throat made of fear has softened and she has moved slowly down into the warm place in my breast.

And it’s here in this moment I remember these are the things that bestow inner peace.

And they are all born out of simplicity.

The simple magic of the mundane existence.

The mantra that calls forth in a whisper so sweet is ‘come home’. ‘Come home to here and now’. ‘My darling what’s it like to rest with me here and now?’

So I guess for me that’s it. It’s the devotion and commitment to the things that realign me with truth that vastly changes my being.

And I find there is almost a magic in the dependency formed upon these practises.

It is yoga, it is mediation, it is sowing, photography, drawing, writing.

But it’s also making a cup of tea, watching the birds, feeling the breath in my lungs, a smile from a stranger, a dreary puddle reflecting the sky above.

It’s all the so called mundane things that help me to come home.

I see now there is much I could write on this topic. How painting healed a burn out and deep depression. How photography woke me up again, how writing has been my life raft through all of it. How creating anything with my hands brought me out of my head.

But the thing of most lasting nature and is by far the most magical, Has been the experience of slowly learning to be here now.

With what is. With the world unfolding around me.

With subtle reminders that say hey.. be with the work you have to do or the stranger you meet. Be with the butterfly wing beat and the sound of bees. Be with whatever is in front of you and I promise you, I promise you but a moment of true peace.

So it’s here I say Thank you to this question, to the writers inspiring me on this platform, and thank you to the readers who find their way here.

Today, in the midst of chaos, these pages have ‘thread the needle’ back into inner peace.

Thank you for inspiring a return to the homage of the heart. <3