Are You Available (to Life)?

Life has been quite the ride lately, don’t you think?

​How have your heart and nervous system been responding to it?

A deep truth that’s a core part of my work is that the more available I am to life, the more life becomes available to me (because life + I are intimately entwined.) This sounds obvious enough but we tend not to really lean into it, become infused and embodied in it.

Art by Heather Heininge

And what does that even mean - being available to life? Our minds like to complicate the simplicity of this - most likely because it feels too overwhelming, because we start orienting towards the future and field testing the idea before properly meeting it here and now.

Simply put, it means invoking generosity towards all that’s present in our life at this moment - which also includes the absence of anything that we think should be here now, the negative spaces.

​It’s a wholehearted generosity towards what we judge as sacred and profane about our lives, ourselves, the world. When we do this, we naturally start to notice all the ways that life is deeply loving and generous towards us - not least in its capacity to allow us to be here, just as we are in this moment.

There’s a reciprocal generosity there, a sweet and powerful energetic exchange.

​When we clench up and constrict against this sensational ride - that too is how life is moving through us right now. Can we allow the sensation of closing off to be here also? Can we be generous towards that and make space for that too?

Can we be here - open, available and generous?

This thing that’s here that I don’t like - this ugly frog that keeps following me around, never leaving my side, can I turn towards it with love and compassion, perhaps even cultivate the courage to kiss it?

​What happens then?

​We become the space for evolution and transformation to take place. We’re able to recognize life reflecting back to us in the same loving way - the way it’s always been doing, waiting for us to notice.

In that spaciousness, we become grounded in the treasure of our intuition and the tension of confusion dissolves with a sigh of relief.

We begin to feel and experience how deeply in love life has been with us - from the moment we took our very first breath - and at least one lifetime’s inherited programming of bad, wrong and shameful starts to be seen through and released.

​The more capacity I have to be available to life, the more life delightfully, synchronistically reflects back to me - which in turn gives me the spaciousness, intuition and trust with which to meet challenges that ultimately support my growth.

​The more available I am to life, the more curious I’m willing to become about how life is unfolding for me. (This flavor of curiosity is synonymous with answering the mythic call to adventure, the journey of the soul’s flowering.)