We are swimming in the river of life, sometimes smack in the middle of the fast moving current, sometimes grounded on a sandbar for a time until the water rises again.
Life moves greater ease when we are immersed and surrendered to the flow. Fighting the current of the river of life depletes and weakens the spirits of living beings.
The waters of this river move with one purpose – to join with all waters all rivers streams and creeks, all lakes, inland seas. To become one water.
Allowing yourself to move with the current of the river, allowing it to take you where it wants and needs to flow; steering a bit now and then to keep yourself from running aground, your life will flow with more ease than you ever thought possible.
The gravity pulls all water finally, to the meeting place. This is the vast ocean where trillions of tiny water droplets that once fell as rain or snow, hail or sleet across our Earth merge and become one in a universe of surging and living and sacred water.
Let your spirit and the spirit of water guide you.
Dear beloved, do you exist in the manner of frozen ice, living in a perpetual winter, or do you live and breathe and move like flowing water? Have you known both ways of being?
All who walk this earth find themselves in the season of life called winter from time to time, a winter in the mind, in the emotions, a frozen heart, perhaps a time of grief.
GCW in snow
If you are stuck in the cold, you will find a way to cycle through the season of winter in your life and move on to the time of thaw and warming. This feels like spring with new life unfolding everywhere, giving way to the bank full flow in streams and rivers and the green leaves of summer.
When you are living in the seasons of spring and summer within your heart, your life flows effortlessly downstream finding the path of least resistance, moving forward with grace, moving toward the ocean with ease.
In summer, your life is like a river, refreshing all who drink of it, sustaining life along its course. The river of your life moves through the landscape, flowing easily around obstacles, even cutting through layers of stone over the course of centuries, to reach the goal.
Sunlit ripples, shallow creek
Then once again you may experience the biting winds and chilly air of autumn and into the frozen time of winter. All forward movement, all flow ceases when winter arrives, life goes underground and water freezes. Everything is stuck in place, frozen in time and space. As you have been here before, you know it is a temporary state. Do not lose heart, dear ones.
With time, patience, self awareness and self love, you can thaw the frozen and stuck places in your heart. Reach out for help if you need it. Your life can once again flow like water in midsummer.
Where there is forward movement and flow, there is life.
I am swimming in this river of life. Sometimes smack in the middle of the fast moving current, surrendering to the flow. Not fighting it.
Sometimes the river of life runs low during dry periods and grounds me on a sandbar for a time, until the rains come and the water rises again.
And then, once again, I give myself to the river, trusting its course and flow as the current pulls me downstream.
The water of this river joins all waters of the earth, all creeks, rivers, streams lakes, inland seas, all melted glaciers, ice and snow. The current’s pull grows stronger.
The flow of all water on our planet culminates finally in the one great meeting place.
This is the ocean, where numberless droplets merge and become one universe of surging and living water, the stuff of life.
We, the various waters of the Earth, journey effortlessly across and through the land, finally reaching the great water where we gather together as one water.
From billions of tiny raindrops, thousands of streams lakes and rivers we flow downstream and merge into oneness – the global ocean.
We must flow and find our level, seeking the effortless path, carving the landscapes gullies, canyons, wide river valleys, woodland streams, prairie pot holes, wetlands, huge deep lakes on our journey to the great oneness.
We come together in the great oceans and seas, heaving and swelling, rippling or calm.Life giving. Life affirming. All our tiny drops melding into one mighty water. Then we separate again, as billions of our droplets evaporate and merge effortlessly with the air.
As water vapor we gather to create clouds, fall as rain, sleet snow, or hail and begin our long journey once again to the gathering place of all waters.
We begin our journey once again as we fall to Earth, gathering with other waters, becoming stronger and more powerful as we increase in volume.
We make our way downstream, meandering and slow or rushing in flood, blessing your Earth with the gift of life as we flow through and shape your varied landscapes.
Finally we reach our mother waters and pour into her. We cannot flow back upstream, or undo our transformation to salt water as we reach our destination.
We are the sacred waters of the Earth.
We are the stuff of life.
I am ceaseless and timeless. I flowed past the camps of your ancestors in ancient times, and I flow now under the concrete and steel bridges of your streets and highways, between fields of corn and beans. I flow past the towns and factories through forests and wetlands.
Life flows endlessly here- always the same, always new and fresh.
I may change course over time, undercut and topple the tallest trees, cut through solid stone, shape and carve the landscape.
I carry much that you choose to discard, your pollution and garbage. It becomes part of me. Is this what you want?
I rise and flood in spring, after the long winter freeze, swelling and spreading expanding beyond my banks. I pick up speed and power.
Do not argue with a flooded river!
My ripples respond to the most delicate vibrations of wind and weather and light and water currents, to rumblings in the earth, the movements of the stars.
The sun reflects and creates sparkles and dancing bands of light in my depths. You might sit near me and meditate on my hypnotizing moving light and water show. Find peace here.
Sunlit ripples on shallow water
I provide a home for the water dwellers, the fish of all descriptions, crustaceans, insects, the tadpoles and frogs, turtles, food for the fur-bearers and birds, a place of thirst quenching for all.
I grind and polish rough stones to smooth. I grind and polish smooth stones to sand. I compress sand into sandstone. Do not ask me how or why. It is in my nature to do so.
I run under the open sky at night, only the stars and moon lighting me in the uninhabited places. I move under the earth in complete darkness, carving the structure of this planet into caves of great complexity and beauty.
I am the river of life that flows through your ancient memory into your present and on toward the future.
It is my purpose to collect the waters of the earth and channel them effortlessly, to cleanse and shape the earth, to reach oneness with the great waters at the end of my journey… which is only the beginning.
When you were a child, did you resist your bath-time, bedtime, school? Did you resist the rules imposed on you by authority figures?
Now that you are the authority figure in your life, an autonomous being, what do you resist?
Resisting anything creates energetic armor, blocks in your energy field. Resistance creates tightness where there could be flow, disease where there could be harmony, tension where there could be ease, disconnection where there could be wholeness.
Does a fast moving stream push against the boulder and use all its strength to resist its bulk and weight? The stream simply flows around the boulder with ease. The boulder is irrelevant to the mission of the stream, which is to flow with ease.
Flowing stream, autumn leaf
What obstacles, or boulders do you encounter in your life? Can you flow around them like a river?
When you push against, strain and fight, struggle and resist the obstacles in your way, you block your flow and cause conflict both within you and outside of you.
When you allow the energy of your body and life to flow freely, your creative inspiration will provide surprising solutions to the boulders you encounter.
Ask Grandmother Cottonwood 