boundary of alchemy

As people who are committed to living, learning and growing we develop our capacity for honest self-reflection. This is a critical and important skill.

Yet sometimes self-reflection loops me back on myself in a movement of subtle self-protection. It cushions me from the edge of living.

Last week I wrote about the past tumbling forward and dissolving into the unknown future, that we exist on this boundary of alchemy.

Sometimes, despite not knowing what the F is going on, we have to make the choice for action. Moving in the direction of the unknown which lies before us, often in shadow.

We can’t go back. This is a challenging thing! Challenging to be with that falling forward edge of life, not looking over our shoulders at choices already gone. Challenging to trust enough that in this place we will have the exact learning and lessons we need- even if we don’t fully understand them for years to come.

What if…the effusive border between what is illuminated and what is in shadow is a place of vitality, a place that holds love, power, passion and peace? And what if it is a place that is accessed through the practice of open eyes, heart, senses and curiosity?

I leave you with questions, and the invitation to “live into the questions”, not fix to the solutions. 

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

photo by Adrian Hutapea of Tracy and art object by jamie lee christiana