The Unseen Path: How Presence Guides Us to Serendipitous Encounters

Especially when we least expect them.

Photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash

I started this community blog over a year ago to help us, including myself, reconnect to joy, hope and reminders that something other than our limiting thoughts and human minds, is supporting us.

Why?

Because we forget.

Because we all experience challenge and hardship and painful losses, which poke at the parts of us that stop believing.

Or maybe never believed. Wanted to. Tried to. But kept getting reminders of feeling alone, or lost, or sad or angry at life itself, and questioning if this is all there is.

My favorite optician said to me recently, “I was angry with my parents when they took away my funding and I told them- This is not fair. I didn’t ask to be here. You brought me here by your choice and now you want me to do it on my own???”

That made me laugh. So relatable.

That feeling of overwhelm and concern. That questioning if we’re ready for THIS- whatever “this” is. Feeling like a child one moment who wants to be taken care of and feeling like the over achieving or over extended grown up the next.

My personal study has taken me down the most interesting and ornate paths the last four and a half years.

I keep thinking I’m going to write about it, and then a supportive voice pops up inside me and says “Not yet. This part is for you.”

So I’m taking it in. Soaking in the support, the knowledge, the expansive learning that is enriching my life, and at some point, will be for others.

I’m living with a lot of awe in the discoveries and experiences.

For example, I received a sound healing recently that hit a note bringing up a body memory of my mother holding me when I was an infant. It was a full body warmth and comfort that I had no cognitive memory of.

I felt supported and safe and loved. I now know how to access this feeling when I feel overwhelmed.

Or the conversation I had again recently with Mother Mary at a seaside retreat center I visited a couple times. She encouraged me to go back to my original abandonment wound and connect with compassion, so I could soften and release the fear. Again, a full body warmth and feeling of comfort and support.

I am having these kinds of experiences often. Like little breadcrumbs along the way keeping me curious and invested.

I also keep telling my therapist that my skeptic part thinks it’s all just a bit too weird. Conversations with disembodied energies, feeling memories of my life as a baby. I mean, it’s odd for typical every day living.

Whereas the part of me that is loving the support is not wanting to fill up my life with busyness ever again because these experiences are feeding my own need for hope, trust and belief in that which is not only in my immediate view.

I am enamored with the people I keep meeting in the courses I take, the groups I’m invested in, the coffee shops I randomly end up at….they all connect. Have resonance. Show me something new and remind me that my path is guided with so many benchmarks of hope, I have to work to see the opposing view.

I can step outside of the grief I’m experiencing and see, truly see, the support that is with me every step of the way.

I’ve been in this biz for a long time and know for certain, we heal in layers. We have to. We can not experience all of our suppressed pain at once or we’d be non functioning humans.

This layer I’m walking through is very messy. The kind where I keep looking outside of me to see if I can hire someone else to clean it up. If only that kind of clean up crew existed….

Since it doesn’t, I’m learning to let go of the mess in other ways. I’m practicing presence. When the past becomes loud, or the future becomes an area I’m attempting to control with a tight grip, I pause and ask- where am I?

I look around and name the colors in front of me. Notice the shapes and sizes of images I see. Feel the temperature of the air on my skin. Listen for the sounds near me and those a little further away. I seek comfort in what is in front of me and right now.

I notice where the tension sits in my body. Where I feel constricted and tight. And then I notice where I feel open and peaceful. Where the calm in my body lives and keeps me company.

This helps me come back to the now, feel more present, and rest in the knowing that, right now- all is well. There is nothing for me to change or fix.

How about you?

What is helping you feel supported and engaged with hope these days? What reminds you we are guided by something bigger than the most frantic part of our minds?