Snow capped mountains against a bright blue sky, a pasture with cows and a farmhouse next to a clear lake that reflects it all. I am here looking at that scene, taking it in. Breathing it in as if it had the power to relax and fill me. A balm for the soul as I rest. Behind me is the past that I am trying to escape. In front of me the dream of a world that could be but how to access? The lake is in the way and I have no boat. A metaphor for being stuck. How do you get a ship out of a bottle? Imagine it out. The possibilities in front of me are more than what they just appear to be. I could focus on trying to find a boat and exploring the mechanics of all that. Or…, I could imagine that I am not as stuck as I believe myself to be. That the path around the lake will also get me where I want to go; or perhaps, retracing my steps and thereby repairing what might be broken in life. Or, just being still and allowing the grandeur of this scene to fill me so that these worldly possibilities are not the only ones that I have. Being fully present with this scene, with this beauty, with the force that beckons me beyond the confines of my concrete self. One could just rest, breathe it in, be present, allow this present moment to do its transformative work. Get out of my head and my thoughts and my plans and my worries and my concerns and my barriers and my limitations. Allow the moment to free me, to take me to something/someplace much more peaceful. But then, does that then become the siren call to escapism? Do I give into this other fantasy that believes that some other place, that beckoning place, is preferable to what I have in front of me? No…, just be present, be still. Allow this to be this. Let this thisness be enough; don’t be tempted by the thatness of life that forever beckons and forever disappoints. Let go. All will be well in some deep way that is itself transformative, without words, without being able to explain, without form, without a story. Just be. And from that place, take the next step, one taken in trust of your connection to this world that is so easy to see in the mountains and the sublime beauty in front of you but is also there just sitting in a shabby room with a boring view. It is not out there; it is in here. Live fully into this moment and there is release and realization in that. Rest, peace, perhaps even joy. Relax……