Wake to be regarded: a pain remedy.

What wild frontiers can be crossed when we know we belong?

I woke recently with these words in my head.  Initially, I wrote them for myself, poetically spelling out a set of instructions for something I call the “regarding practice”. 

But the words have been getting heavier in my journal; the page keeps opening there on their own.  I realized perhaps sharing them might be of some benefit, though I don’t like to tell people what to do, and loath reading words that do so – the assumptions about who we all are tend to get under my skin.

So this is risky, but I’m going to share this as a quiet incantation anyhow, for me and you, because in the wake of pain I don’t just want to look and say, “yes, I see you there”.  I want to offer a balm.

Wake to be regarded.

find the body still
limbs quiet, heart
settled in rhythm
flits of the mind ignored
until you are just here. 
just this.

now.
let the senses take in this place.
allow the delicacy of subtle scent.
see the individuals – oak perhaps,
passing cloud or singular stone.
see the whole painting too:
green overlapping brown insisting
on bird reliant
on both open sky and
hiding spot.

the sounds in the distance.
the sounds inside this place,
that includes you.

now. 
let this place, this moment full of
breathing life, sense you back.
let yourself be seen, here where its
safe, by the unassuming trees, the passing
particles of air, the ground looking up into your feet.

be known.  be scented.  let the land
taste you, withholding no flavor.
let this particular stew of ancestry, microbes,
guilt and shame,
desire and aversion,
shape and scent that is called
“you”
be offered completely to this place.

now.
can you feel it?
how you belong?
how you are part of the taste of
this magnificent place?

you have stepped inside now,
become a member of the
wild beauty now.
you, in letting yourself be known,
have changed the story completely.

Want to practice this together? here is one way…