Cycling through the Seymour forest yesterday, heart pounding, hair flying free from under my helmet, I feel time slow itself.

Mature cedars flank me, sentries lining the way.  High above their branches wave me deeper in to this wooded wonderland.  Dappled light marks the path and beside me miniature prehistoric forests of ferns sway in the soft breeze.  Lupins and foxglove and tall dandelions reach for the sky.  Salal and huckleberry and mahonia mound in bushes, leaves fluttering lightly.

Every shade of green weaves itself into a blanket of healing for my tired soul.

Birds caw and chirp and twitter.  A yellow breasted jewel of a bird with black and white wings and a vivid red cap slips from her perch and swoops and dances alongside me.  My heart lifts up and sings with her.

The sweet mossy air fills my nostrils and a deep sigh escapes me.  My legs and lungs synchronize to propel me up and down the sloping curves.  I look ahead to where I want to go and my bicycle takes me there.  Moving like this feels like freedom and connection and life.

A narrow path brings me to a small lake  The sun touches my cheek as I nestle into a small rock outcropping, seating myself on the red-brown earth.  A pair of ducks hug the curves of  the lake, diving for algae.  I dip my fingertips in the cool water.  Stillness and fullness and space within and without.

A breeze ruffles the water and as the late afternoon sun touches down sparks of light fly off the surface like beacons.  Glinting brilliance twinkling and dancing in the distance.  Flashing on and off in split seconds, the light is evanescent.  Like we are.  For a moment I feel as though I am some long lived creature able to watch millenia of humans as they shine their light and then vanish.  Here in a moment and then gone.  Luminous and beautiful and brief.

Yet as I look closer, the light nearer to me lasts longer.  It glows in golden disks that shimmer and bend and then softly melt back into the whole from which they come.  Awareness opnes me as I feel the power of being present.  I understand.

From a distance there is so very little time.  Living distant from ourselves our lives flash by in an instant.  Living in our heads we live the surface of these lives.  Regret and worry pull us away from the moment, drawing us to past and future, robbing us of the little time we do have. 

Being present we get more life out of our life.  Living closer to the raw experience of our lives, our short lives lengthen.  Being here and now our presence expands our light.  Instead of a mere flash of life we are shimmering and luminous.  Our reflection upon our experience is literally reflective... it reflects more of the source from which we emerge.  We get more and we are more - by being more present - bringing our counsciousness to this moment.

We have the brave and powerful choice to enter into our experience.  To bring our full consciousness to the body and feel and smell and hear and taste and see the truth of our light, our life.   To do this though we need to be able to manage the discomfort of dissonance.  We need to grow our capacity to tolerate the quivers of vulnerability that ruffle the waters of ourselves.

They speak to us of our tender transient humanness.  And we can know this.  We are large enough now.

We are luminous life.  Let yourself feel this shining moment.  You are so worth it. 

Photo Credit:  ELB Photos