I love to walk barefoot in the mud. To feel earth’s wet, oozy goodness squishing between my toes, sliding across my skin.
I love to dance in the rain. To stand high on the top of a hill feeling the sky washing down against my skin, my hair flattening against my skull, my face soaking in the nourishing waters pouring down.
I love to swim naked in the sea. To slide effortlessly through crystal clear water flowing against my skin. To feel the waters of the universe caressing my body, holding me up, holding me in its embrace.
All of these things I love to do because they remind me how alive I am. How of the universe I am. How limitless my possibilities are in a world of wonder and awe.
All of these things I love to do are part of my path. Just as all the travails and triumphs I have experienced, the hardships and the missteps, the joyful leaps and the stumbling tumbles, they are part of my path that have carried me here, to today, where I have a choice.
Do I stay asleep or do I awaken?
Without all of these things, I would not be me where I am today.
Just as all the things you have experienced, endured, witnessed, fallen in love with, stepped away from, eased slowly into or leapt blindly into, stumbled haltingly through or rushed fearlessly within, all of these thing are part of your path that make up the journey of being you.
They are not who you are. They are your how. The how of how you got here, to this moment where you can choose to fall back to sleep, or awaken.
We humans spend so much time focused on the how. So much effort trying to get through, over, into, out of circumstances, situations, opportunities, we forget it is not the ‘how’ that creates our journey, it is the what we do with what appears on our journey that creates the one we are today.
Immersed in the how of whether or not we step, leap, dance, cavort, we forget we have the power to awaken completely to our divine essence. To our brilliant light, our amazing grace.
And so, we focus on the how, thinking it will make a difference to what happens in our life.
It will not make a difference if we choose to stay asleep to our magnificence.
When I was an infant I crawled. I am an adult now. I can still crawl, but I can also dance, leap, jump, skip, walk…
No matter how I move through the world, how old I am, how rich, poor, slim, fat, tall, short. It doesn’t matter the colour of my skin, the depth of my roots in tribal soils or the wearing of my knees from prostration before the God or gods of my knowing, it is what I choose to do that makes my difference one of awakened bliss or stumbling in the dark guilt for being alive.
Do I choose to wake up or do I choose to stay asleep?
As Alan Watts asks at the end of this short video on waking up, “You put yourself in this situation. So it’s a question fundamental. Do you define yourself as a victim of the world, or as the world?”
Dare Boldly 
Lovely post and powerful message from Alan Watts! Thank you Louise for sharing your light 💛
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Thank you Val — Alan Watts always makes my mind snap open! ❤
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I agree Louise 💛 He says the most evocative things in such a calm and assured way … we have to pay attention!
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I enjoyed this read … made me think of a quote I like: “Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.” – Christopher McDougall
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What a fabulous quote Mark — I had read it before and forgotten it so thank you for sharing it!
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Wide Awake We Are‼️
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What a delightful space to share with you Pam!
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Thanks a lot for posting this. I was originally drawn to it because of the feature image “no mud, no lotus”. I’ve only recently stumbled upon this quote and it keeps popping up. I take that as a good sign, and this time it has lead me here 🙂 Love your post as well as the Alan Watts video. I still use a lot of “poor little me” language, I noticed, but I’m also very carefully starting to tread the path of lifting the veil, of dropping the disguise. It’s not a comfortable journey, though… Makes me want to crawl back under the veil quite often.
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I love how you describe you are ‘treading the path of lifting the veil’. I know that feeling well. Many years ago, someone who was lovingly giving me feedback, told me that she experienced me as Queen of the Masks. I was livid. Angry. Defensive. Until I stopped to breathe and realized — she was telling me the loving truth. Dropping my many masks is a lifetime process for me. ANd like you, I stumble and sometimes, dropping a particular mask is so uncomfortable and scary and tiring, I do want to crawl back behind it — but oh my, what a loss I would feel if I let myself go there!
I am grateful for the ‘no mud, no lotus’ quote’s connecting us. As I type, I am listening to the sounds of the waves and seagulls from your About Page. what a gift as I sit here at my desk on the windward side of the Rockies, far from the ocean.
Blessings.
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It’s very hard to imagine you wearing many masks, reading your blog. It’s so very authentic. If that is where this journey leads to then it is well worth the pain and the sweat and discomfort. Thank for dropping by my own blog. I’m glad you like the waves. I thought about it for a long time as I didn’t want to make the sound be too intrusive. But I just hear the waves anyhow when I look at that photo of mine. So I thought I might as well make my readers hear it too, very discretely in the background. I’m originally from the sea and it just always makes me feel at home.
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🙂 The sounds of the waves was a gift — as was the idea to include it on my About page — because when I went to do that, I realized I hadn’t updated it for 2 years. 🙂 Now, it is updated and I have shared the wonderful link you shared — so many gifts in this space we share. Thanks!
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I’m glad I could contribute 🙂
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And thank you for linking back to my blog. That’s very generous of you.
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I love to attribute wonderful things to the wonderful people who bring them to my attention! 🙂
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🙂
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Love that picture and words of wisdom! Very awesome 🙂
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Zenflash is always filled with inspiring photos and words!
Thanks so much for dropping by.
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