What we seek is already here

Here I am in Crescent Moon Pose backbend, with hands bound variation at my favourite spot in the Lake District. The classic Crescent Moon with high hands is easier on the shoulders and a bigger back bend, but this low hands variation creates an intense shoulder and chest stretch, which everybody can try. Opening the chest is all about looking upwards and outwards, and the natural process of growth in life is to move forwards and upwards, seeking more, reaching beyond, extending ourselves, raising our game and gaze. And yet the supernatural secret we seek in our natural striving is already within us and under our feet, in the ground of our being, where we’ve always been. The great mystery of life is that in order to discover the heart of our own being, we need to go on a journey, to perform a dance, maybe to fight a battle, to complete the circle of the cycles of life, to find the glowing hearth that is home, that we’ve always known, but now see with new eyes. Sometimes, when we are pursuing a bold objective, with energy and passion, and we see things are not quite coming together as we’d hoped, we suddenly become aware in a quiet moment, that what has actually happened instead, has its own perfection, in a way we couldn’t have organised, or planned, and that the universe has organised a love letter to our heart, which we can read, feel, and celebrate, if we are awake and aware. Perfection is both a presence and a flow, both always there and unfolding, revealing itself to us, both in stillness and in movement, both in the formless and beautiful forms, which include the structures and events of life. As it says in Ezekiel, God will replace our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh, if we take time to sit in presence, and become aware of the beauty already unfolding, within and around us.