On a chilly December late morning in the winter of 2023, I ducked into my local spiritual shop. It was a tiny hole in the wall on 48th street that had become both my local purveyor of white copal incense and my go-to for a quick energetic respite from the streets of midtown New York on weekend errand runs.
That day I was carrying around an internal heaviness and discomfort that was consuming me from my head down to my toes. Looking back years and many similar days later, I know exactly what that discomfort meant and still means every time I feel it. More on this in a bit.
As usual, I made small talk with the owner as my fingers brushed the crystal selection and my eyes scanned the wall of resins, incense, natural oils. While checking out that day, he offered me a gift from a small plastic bin of glass message stones. I was to close my eyes, pick a stone, and put it in my pocket only to look at it at an undisclosed time later in the day. When it “felt right”.
I walked with this tiny stone in my pocket for hours until finally, I felt the feeling of right timing and pulled it out to read its message :
“Relax into it.”
Interesting, I thought, as my entire body ached from days of both internal and physical clenching.
That tiny stone sat in a bowl on my coffee table, it traveled with me through many countries on many trips, its edges were smoothed as I tossed from hand to hand and played ping pong with my thoughts.
It would take me years to understand the enormous lesson contained in that tiny stone, gifted to me in a moment where letting go was the remedy for what ailed me but not something I yet understood how to do.
That feeling I carried that day and have felt again on occasion since had a simple cause : I was wrestling. Not with myself. Not with someone else. Not with a thing, an idea, or a decision. But with a current that was taking me somewhere other than where I was, into another season I couldn’t see from where I was and therefore didn’t trust.
The last few years I’ve been relearning how to do what that stone first suggested years ago : relax into it. This, I’ve discovered over time, starts with relearning how to notice the underlying stream of constant change and evolution and its dance; with paying attention to the cosmic current and divine order within it. It feels invisible at first, but once you start to notice it, it reveals it’s anything but.
Its presence is everywhere, its order repeats in everything - - -
Seasons come and go.
Plants sprout, grow, flower, drop their fruit, and shed their leaves. New seeds sprout come springtime and start again.
Relationships begin, grow, end. New ones begin.
The sun rises and sets and rises again.
The moon waxes and wanes and waxes again.
We sleep, we dream, we rise.
Illumination, darkness, illumination, darkness.
Birth. Growth. Death. Rebirth.
Cycles and waves.
Tides rise and fall.
Waves gather and crash.
Up, down.
In, out.
Forward, backward.
This, that.
All in rhythm, all in tempo.
All of it, regardless of individual season, together always moving forward toward something else. Toward something new.
It feels appropriate that I am sharing this on a September morning as I watch leaves fall with every rustle of the wind around me. Where I am in the world doesn’t provide the visual spectacle of changing of seasons in the same way other places do, but the familiar feeling of it is hard to miss.
The shift. The literal and metaphorical space between seasons. The kind of space that gives us the gift of time to reflect back on a phase experienced and then asks us to shift our attention forward, to the next.
This space can be a challenge or a gift. Which it is, is up to us.
Do we believe we can control the cosmic current?
Do we think we can stop it or postpone it?
Do we think we exist outside of this process and the divine order underneath it all?
Or is our effort better spent deciding what we’ll do with the season we’ve been gifted?
If we’re having trouble deciding, I’ve found it helpful to remember that we are a mere speck existing on a slightly larger speck in an incomprehensibly vast universe. One designed with such balance and purpose we don’t need to think about how to sustain it at all. One propelled always forward by something bigger and more aware of the much larger puzzle than us.
In that bigger, wider vaster picture, it becomes much easier to trust in the timing of our lives, of our relationships, of our efforts, of our seasons, of our dreams. And then remember to just - - -
relax into it.
- - -
This week I’m sharing the first three published creative studies this year from The Laboratory - - - pieces of visual thinking, contemplation made manifest through visual art, questions explored through noticing. Underlying questions about our perspective and approach to change, the flow of evolution, or just (re)learning how to see the cosmic current, the divine order we are a part of, and rethinking our place within both are present in all three.
Below you’ll also find an audio selection - - - Oxygène by Jean-Michel Jarre - - - that feels appropriate to the theme at hand. Released in 1976 and created in a makeshift studio in his Paris apartment, it’s not only a trip through a 1980s coded nebula, it’s perhaps also a reminder that we can always start where we are, with what we have, and trust the invisible hand with the rest.
If you want to listen while you read or explore the studies, hit play on
Part 4 here. For the full album, scroll to the bottom of this email and work your way back up.
As another ambient option, if you're feeling something less trippy and more expansive, I also love
Eternity by Stellardrone. You can press play on this one
here.
Thanks for being here,
