Circles

If time were given a shape, it seems it would be circles:

years, months, days…. all moving in circles.

The patterns of the natural world also show up in circles:

the hawk catching the warm uplift, rising in circles;

the circles of the vortex pulling the leaf under water, only to reemerge downstream, still spinning… circles.

Sometimes I feel as if I too am moving in circles with the lessons I am learning in this life. And yet, simultaneously, each one holds something new…profoundly new. So new that for a moment I do not see the circle I am in, I feel I am lost in the undercurrent of the water and everything is blurred

...blue

...and green.

It might only be when someone else reflects to me “this doesn’t sound new” that my “aha!” moment happens and I realize yes, I have been here before…

but this time it is different.

This time I feel it more deeply.

This time the knowledge that keeps escaping me seems just a touch closer to being within my sight, within my grasp.

Maybe I can even hold it for a moment before it slips away again.

My most recent rotation occurred on a trip to Colorado, a place that helped shape me in my early twenties, and continues to do so as I make what is becoming my annual pilgrimage.

This time I swam in the currents of a Somatic Experiencing training, learning the basics all over again at incredible new depths, circling and transforming not only my understanding of this exciting approach to healing, but also my sense of self in the process.

Immediately afterwards I was “off the grid”, so to speak, and receiving the rejuvenation of playing in the mountains, learning from dear friends, and feeling my heart explode in the process, all the while practicing my ability to hold onto my self…

and this is my circle:

to listen to my intuitive knowing while also being present and vulnerable with others.

There’s more to say on that topic, much more than is fitting for this post.

But rather than explain my personal cycles of evolving, I invite you to consider the circle in which you are currently spinning. Wherever you are, my hope is that you are allowing yourself to move through with new awareness, gentleness, and self-compassion. 

Widening Circles

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?

Rainer Maria Rilke; Book of Hours, I 2