Every now and again, I feel the desire to visit this spot high on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. It has become a sacred spot for me and served as a gathering repository for many life experiences. A peaceful place where I find sanctuary and can tap into my inner guidance system and glean wisdom. I come here seeking inspiration from a higher perspective and can check in with myself and the timeline of my life, where I have been and where I am going. I sat here and wrote last week and I snapped this photo to share the view. Google enhanced the colors.
When I write out or type M i s s i s s i p p i, I find myself saying it out loud to spell it correctly. It makes me chuckle. I can hear and see the little child within me standing lined-up against the wall in elementary school, alongside my classmates during a spelling bee. I was asked to spell Mississippi. M i s s i s s i p p i. I remember it vividly. I loved the feeling of accomplishment and positive acknowledgement when I spelled it and other words correctly. I learned how to spell it long before I had ever visited the mighty Mississippi River and brought her healing energy into my heart.
I didn't know as a child I would one day live very near to and be drawn in by her magnetic energy. The Mississippi has become a personal symbol for the irreversible passage of time, a pathway to freedom and witness to many transformations in my life.
She wound through the city near my apartment to the university I attended and downtown to where I worked. I ran my first of many10-K races and my second marathon up and down the river roads that bordered her on either side. I forged friendships with coworkers sharing a drink after work when they introduced me to this beautiful spot and watched the beautiful sun rise in the sky. I studied here in college. I brought my sons here when they were young to hike in her woods and to descend the hill to her water's edge to explore and write their names in the limestone.
The mighty Mississippi has witnessed for 40 years and held sacred my laughter and my tears, my running, hiking, biking and walking. She helps me find stillness. I fell in love sharing time with my beloved walking near her shores. Her presence has flowed through my life from college to now. I love her and she loves me.
Sitting here watching the power of the river's flow beneath me and seeing the vastness of the city in the distance brings up different feelings in me now than it did in my youth. In college, I would go home to visit the small town I grew up in and I couldn't wait to get back to the large city. I was shedding the self I knew growing up and expanding into who I was meant to be.
In the city, I was anonymous and that enabled me to create a new life for myself and the possibilities were endless. I felt such freedom and new opportunities laid out before me. Now, I find the city's energy to be a bit more of a drain on my energy and spending time in the city isn't as appealing as it once was. But I will always be grateful for all of the experiences I had and the opportunities held within the cities' limits.
Now, as I sit upon the ledge above the Mississippi writing this morning, it's the water and being surrounded by the hundreds of trees around me that draw me in with their healing energy. The coalescing sounds of the wind rustling through the colorful leaves still in the trees and the ones that have fallen and are swirling around on the ground. The songs of the birds and the squirrels running through the woods and the flowing river and the distant hum of the city. It all becomes one sound.
I teach this technique in meditation. The world is filled with many sounds. You are very rarely in a place that is completely silent. When you sit still and breathe, allow all of the sounds around you to melt into one sound. One vibrational sound and sink it with your breath. With practice, you will be able to find stillness and center yourself wherever you are by inviting all the sounds around you to gather together as one sound. I wished I had known this as a child growing up in a crowded household. I had the ability within me all along to find peace in any moment.
Each body of water can represent the different flow of energy or e-motions within us. Rivers are symbolic for the flow of life and are constantly changing and moving. Sometimes, like today, the flow meanders effortlessly through with calm and ease. I am in the flow of life and drawing to me joy, abundance and the knowing that all things are possible. It marks a time in my life when I am living the truth of who I am and I have learned to listen to my intuition. It has been a long journey to get to this point in time, but life is about the journey to self-realization and not the destination.
Other times, the flow of the unknown and emotions rage on and we can lose our footing, possibly drowning in our efforts trying to control what simply cannot be controlled. Life around us is not flowing smoothly or going in the way we think it needs to. Perhaps at times there are spots in our lives, just like the river flow, where there is barely a trickle or where we have become stuck or stagnant. Have the courage to feel what has become stuck in your life.
These are times that urge us to shift our awareness and learn to listen to our hearts, our power source, our inner guidance. Life flows gently moving down the stream instead of going up against the current where we find nothing, but struggle. Be naturally in the flow and a state of allowing by empowering yourself to be all that you already are and your life will change in miraculous ways.
When we allow life to naturally unfold it is the basis for freedom and oneness. Live in your truth from the open, flowing, energy of your heart space by expanding your awareness and consciousness. The door is always open to create the life of your dreams by changing and broadening your perspective.
Old stories don't need to hold you back. When you get triggered you feel powerless. Be aware of the victim-consciousness, the story you might be holding onto that is causing you to react in a certain way. You have the power within you to change. Teach your body to be present when you feel a strong reaction to something that is triggering you. What is the resistance there? Feel it. Give it some space, forgiveness and compassionate understanding. It is time to shift it and let go of the story behind it and do not go back into the story. You can not solve anything from the same perspective or frequency that caused the problem in the first place.
You draw to you what you put your attention on. If you are worried about something, worrying more will only bring you to more suffering. You become stuck, stagnant and powerless and not in the flow of your life. Put your attention on what you do want in your life and draw that to you. Get in the flow and open to the powerful energy all around you and the wisdom within you.
I have come a long way from being a young, inexperienced and shy college student sitting on the bluff above the Mississippi wondering what my life will be to the woman I am today sitting upon this spot that has become sacred. I am here to remind you that you are light. You are eternal. You are loved. You are always expanding and becoming more. Listen to the voice of intuition in your heart. Be the joy. Be the peace. Be the change you want to see in the world.
Angela O'Brien-Greywitt, Intuitive Mystic
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