Finding the Stillness

Sweet soul,

How blessed I was this past weekend to be invited by the owners of Sediba private game Lodge, just outside of Brits, to enjoy their piece of paradise.

 

Chris had set out with his biking friends on an off road adventure and I headed out into the bush on my mountain bike to get a bit of exercise.

 

As I cycled out of the main gate my bike’s wheels ploughed into the powdery, slippery sand. I had to dig deep within my energy stores to muscle through and simultaneously keep my balance. From the minute I left the Lodge my attention was acutely focused on my situation at hand – keeping my balance, motivating myself to keep pedalling, whilst casting quick glances to my periphery as I heard frightened scurrying of creatures in the bushes around me. 

I spotted a pair of African Hornbills as they glided overhead and played in the trees. A mongoose scurried across the road in front of me.

And then it happened. I tuned into the raucous orchestra of the cicadas. Suddenly the Earth was alive and loud. It was a deafening cacophony of the highest pitch. It was so loud. My first reaction was to shout out: “Be quiet! Can you turn it down please?”

“How silly you are. No one can hear you.” I noticed that I was talking to myself just like an old, lonely person.

And then the tears welled up inside me. I cried as I expressed feelings of absolute gratitude and interconnectedness with the vastness. I cried because I felt so deeply emotional and alive, honoured, blessed, privileged, such a tiny aspect of this amazing creation, the infinite and I felt alone and yet not alone. 

I cried in awe of the connection I felt with the presence of the great I am, the Creator of all that is.

 

The experience was so profound and touched a chord deep within. I realised that the bush has a magic, all of its own, that I had never quietened myself to feel and experience before. It was deeply spiritual, healing and restorative.

Needless to say, I arrived back at the Lodge three hours later happily tired, drenched in perspiration, and grateful for all the man-made luxuries that welcomed me, including the swimming pool, the taps with running water and a comfortable lounger to collapse onto.

I take from my experience of aloneness in the bush a call to remember to tune out and to tune inwards, to notice the extraordinary in the simplest of things, to draw into the present moment in acute awareness and to stop whizzing past all my present moments in a disconnected abstraction of future motivated obsession and haste.

I embrace a knowing that I am supported by and belong to the Universe. I am a small, albeit infinitesimal, part of the whole with all the elements and creatures. I am one with the sun and the moon and the stars. And I am deeply blessed.

My prayer for you is that you too can find the stillness and interconnectedness within and without. 

All my love

Nicolette