Can an ocean stop it's waves from breaking?Can the rain stop itself from falling? Can a river stop itself from flowing? — Kashyapi
Does anything in life differ from the ocean, the rain and the river?
Do you?
Maybe you think you do.
Human beings are the most arrogant creatures on the planet.
Maybe you think you can control life? Maybe you think you are making the choices?
Or maybe, the choices are making you.
These Quiet Letters come from the flow. They flow through me, not from me. I am simply the messenger.
This morning, on rising, even though it wasn’t a particularly cold day, the flow was to light first fire of Autumn, instead of beginning to write. Now, writing in front of it, it feels right.
Trust the flow.
Don’t resist it.
“A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it. It just blooms.” — Sensei Ogui
The flow may lead you to meet people you would never have met by choice or plan. You will know moments like this already.
All of this, all of life, is the flow.
The trees, the birds, the choice to turn left, or right, to sip tea, or coffee, to go home, or stay a little longer.
The flow is life, this life doesn’t just flow through you, it is you.
The flow is what Lao Tzu talked about, in the Tao te Ching:
"The source of the universe is ultimately unknowable, a great invisible river flowing forever through a vast and fertile valley. Silent and uncreated, it creates all things. All things are brought forth from the subtle realm into the manifest world by the mystical intercourse of yin and yang." — Lao Tzu
This is life.
You don’t need to wait for anything to begin, nor to end.
The flow doesn’t know beginnings nor endings.
Nor do you.
Growing up, through conditioning, we have learned to believe that all things have a beginning, and an ending, edges, boundaries.
None of this is true.
I’m not telling you to believe me.
I’m suggesting that you look for yourself, really look, and see what your own findings are.
Take time to slow down, breathe and sit a while.
Inhale, exhale, rest deeply in yourself.
Turning your attention inwards now, look, search for the Truth of who you are, where you are in this flow.
Are you separate from it?
Are you in it?
Or is it you?
Trust the flow.
You know it better than you imagine.
“Accept the ebb and flow of things, nurture them, but do not own them.” — Lao Tzu
If you fell into a torrentous river right now, what would be the way of the most ease?
To resist the flow?
To swim against the current?
To try to hold onto the side, a rock, or a branch?
You would quickly become exhausted.
Or you could simply relax, float, and flow, becoming one with the river.
“Be still like a mountain and flow like a great river.” — Lao Tzu.
When the situation arose that I was to come to Menorca for 6 months, leaving the side of my teacher, I didn’t resist it, I stepped into it. His own Master’s words were my guide:
“When I see my shoes walking out of the door, I step into them.” — Papaji.
When life takes you somewhere unexpected, as it does in every moment, don’t stay with the idea that things should remain the same.
How could they?
Everything changes.
Nothing ends, nothing begins.
How could it?
“Autumn leaves wither and fall, become compost for Spring flowers. What died? What lives? Nothing leaves this flow.” — Kashyapi
Let the river have you.
This is life.
No need to sit around, trying to work out how to live it, how can you not live it?
Let go and flow.
You are the flow.
Love, Kashyapi
— First published as part of The Quiet Letters series.