…You offer me Space for that encounter a couple years ago with the two does. As I have your words here it comes back so palpably, so viscerally that moment of going out the front door and finding the deer just across and up on the high side of the driveway.
We all stopped.
And from somewhere there was a becoming more as I somehow knew or it came to just meet them wordlessly yes but also deeply from my heart as though it were a sending and receiving directly.
As I “remember” this and re-feel this I am in there again and wonder what/how this relates with your experience.
My heart comes more alive. Yes that sounds right, the activity of my heart comes more alive to itself in this stopping in this way. I see/feel/give from my heart. And the piece that comes more to know itself is the receiving part.
I have to pause here. There are oceans of Benevolence to receive that I have been letting in by the dropper full. OMG
OK This one can go on the blog.
As I reread this having typed it here, a reticent bit comes, this is wide open and something worries about its safety.
It comes to me to pause back at the words that seemed to describe or point to something – oceans of Benevolence.
Letting this In.
A word comes further as I have the whole of this experience – Reception. Something satisfying in there, to have these words come. Oceans of Benevolence. Reception.
Laura Dickinson
Dear Laura,
I’ve just read Oceans of Benevolence. The title drew me to it.
Your sharing invites me to slow down there too. To those moments that I can now recall and that, thankfully, are still alive in me. Waiting to be again encountered, even more fully.
It occurs to me now that ‘slowing down’ is a move toward receptivity. For me.
And I notice my yearning to encounter that Benevolence is stronger than my impulse for self-protection. My fear is here, yes, and the glow of light from the ocean is just too compelling to turn away from it.
Grateful to have this place,
elizabeth
The words “Ocean of Benevolence” really fits what you describe here ….. and there is that element of scary here too….. which takes me back to my own story moment and how that was that felt so wholly embodied and at the same time so alive in me that was not actually of my own making. That is the scary part. I feel larger as me than I am used to. The encounter with Mr.Deer felt like I was part of something so grounded and whole whole and so much more solid. And I liked that sense of that too as cary as that might be. Kevin
Pausing to notice what is there, either inside or outside of ourselves is a very rich experience as your post explains so well. …And it can happen in any moment that we choose to pause.
I once was on a mountain top in Utah away from any form of human civilization. As I sat there, I first realized how quiet it was. There were no cars, airplanes or other machinery of human life to interfere with the quiet. Then I noticed how I could hear an ant walking across the sand and small bug flying toward me from a distance. These were sounds that I never heard before in any other circumstance were now like a roar. Then I started to hear my heart beat.
This is when I understood that all these sounds, all this information is available all the time, we just don’t notice it because so many other things are happening at the same time.
When we pause, we give ourselves permission to hear, see or sense whatever is present that we may never notice if we just continued on with our lives.